High Rise plus Free Fall
by gaelicspirit
Summary: Set in S2 after Wind Water. They've been all-go-no-quit for weeks, and it's taking a toll. They're hurt, tired, and need down time. But when Mac is grabbed so that his special skill set can be used as a pawn in a crazy revenge scheme, nothing will stop Jack from getting him back. Nothing, that is, except his own pain.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** High Rise + Free Fall  
 **Fandom:** MacGyver, 2016  
 **Author** : gaelicspirit  
 **Rating** : PG-13  
 **Characters:** MacGyver, Jack Dalton, Team, OCs - GEN

 **Summary** : Set in S2 after _Wind + Water_. They've been all-go-no-quit for weeks, and it's taking a toll. They're hurt, tired, and need down time. But when Mac is grabbed so that his special skill set can be used as a pawn in a crazy revenge scheme, nothing will stop Jack from getting him back. Nothing, that is, except his own pain.

 **Disclaimer/Warning** : Nothing you recognize is mine. Including the odd movie line. I like to work in quotes now and again. And the characters swear a bit more in my hands than they do on the show. But being that they're both ex-military, I figure some creative license is permissible.

As this is set prior to the S2 finale, you'll need to forget your Mac Daddy knowledge. Also, as usual, medical inaccuracies abound. I did research, but…then I fictioned. So, don't take any of the medical events in this story as gospel. Finally, if there are any actual explosive ordinance expert-types reading this, please turn a blind eye to the bomb-related details. I researched that, too, but then got a little worried that the FBI guy assigned to monitor my computer would start to get suspicious, so I just…pulled a page out of Lenkov's book and wrote around the facts.

 **Author's Note** : This story is set in the same 'verse as my other MacGyver stories, _Anvil + Duct Tape, Wolf + Snow,_ and _Mythology + Snare Net_. You don't have to read those to enjoy this one, but there are references made that harken back to those stories rather than to cannon. Also, just a PSA that I tend to write long chapters. Hope that works okay for you.

Big thanks to my friend and confidant, **ThruTerrysEyes**. Thanks for your help, as always. And to **pandigirl** , whose constant flow of texts and gifs inspire me in this fandom like nothing else.

* * *

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.  
\- Arthur Miller

 **International Airspace**

 **Somewhere between Sao Paulo and Berlin**

 _ **Jack**_

It started because of a paperclip. Or, really, the lack of one.

Jack could see Mac's fingers twitching out of the corner of his eyes. The subtle _shh-shh_ of callouses against denim in the too-quiet interior of the plane was keeping Jack from the rest his body needed. Forcing himself to exhale slowly before shifting in his seat, Jack checked his watch.

0400.

They'd been awake for over twenty-four hours. Correction: _Mac_ had been awake for over twenty-four hours. Jack was able to sleep on the plane. In the back of a truck bumping over the back roads of Brazil. Even leaning up against the wall of a millionaire's man cave waiting for the bad guys to show up. It might not have been the healing, restful slumber he enjoyed wrapped in his IKEA duvet, but it was sleep.

Mac, though. He didn't sleep. Not really. Not until the mission was complete.

Problem was, over the last week, they'd been burning through missions like chain-smoking nicotine addicts.

"Hey, bud," Jack said softly, registering Mac's slight flinch at the sound of his voice in the quiet.

"Thought you were sleeping," Mac replied, not looking away from the window and the darkness.

Jack wondered what he was seeing, looking out into all that black.

"You're thinking too loud for me to sleep," Jack complained. "Want to tell me what's going on in that big brain of yours?"

"Berlin," Mac replied, this time sparing Jack a brief glance. "You know…where we're headed? Formula for dangerous explosives, rich psycho, black market, any of that ringing a bell?"

Jack ignored the undercurrent of sarcasm lacing Mac's words and shifted so that he could slouch sideways in the seats, his boots up on the aisle armrest.

"Sounds vaguely familiar," Jack tilted his head. "'course…kinda all blends together with the bank robbers in San Juan last week, and the corrupt religious sect in Islamabad three days ago, and a different rich psycho in Sao Paulo yesterday."

Mac offered him the concession of a half grin, his head bouncing once. He was quiet for another moment, then, "You think Bozer's okay?"

Jack swallowed, frowning at the way Mac's voice thinned with the question, worry turning him young in four words. "Yeah, he's fine. I separated my shoulder plenty of times."

"Yeah, but…," Mac shrugged. "We're soldiers." He glanced over at Jack. "We're built for this."

Jack scoffed. " _No one_ is built for this, bud. I ain't had a drink of whiskey or slept in a bed in ten days," he quoted with a grin.

Mac chuckled. "Nice one."

"Think of it like this: Bozer and Riley are back in the LA sunshine, kicking back with a brewski—"

"Or anti-inflammatory and pain meds," Mac interjected.

"You say potato…," Jack grinned, tilting his head. "C'mon, man. He's fine. He just needs some down time." He sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Shit. We all do."

"Maybe we'll get it after this mission," Mac said softly, hope clear in his tone as he bounced his fingers against the sides of his legs.

Jack had never wanted a box of paperclips more in his life. Something, _anything_ to give his partner some way to channel his energy, to keep himself focused and present. Mac pulled a piece of paper from the file in the pocket of the seat in front of him and began to fold it.

Jack watched this kid's hands partly in awe, partly in irritation. Mac wasn't even looking at what he was doing; he was staring out through the window into the night once more, but his fingers never stopped moving until he had what looked like a small bird sitting in the palm of his hand.

"If I give you my phone to turn into a toaster, will you settle down?" Jack asked, only half teasing.

Mac looked over in surprise. "What?"

"You're like this big ol' ball of nervous energy." Jack waved his hand to indicate Mac's lanky frame. "It's downright distracting."

"Sorry," Mac frowned. "Besides, I'd need more than your phone if you wanted a toaster; the battery isn't enough of a heating conductor to—"

"Oh _my God_ ," Jack huffed, pulling his cell phone from his back pocket and tossing it toward Mac. "Go up there and show the pilots how you can increase the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow with my phone and your origami thingie there."

MacGyver caught the phone with a sideways grin that accented his dimple, then slid out from his seat. "You know, you're kind of bossy when you're sleep deprived."

"Git," Jack jerked his chin in the direction of the cockpit and watched as Mac made his way to the front of the plane.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Jack closed his eyes and settled back against the wall of the plane, his legs stretched out across the narrow aisle so that his boots rested on the seat Mac had just vacated. He was about three deep breaths from dropping off when he felt a vibration against his boot. Frowning, he opened one eye and looked across the aisle. Seeing nothing, he straightened up and saw Mac had indeed situated himself in the cockpit with the pilots.

The vibration repeated and Jack sat forward, realizing that it was Mac's phone. He'd left it in the seat when he'd taken Jack's—why the kid could never use his own phone for his cockamamie plans, Jack would never know. Grabbing the phone, Jack flipped it over. He knew Mac's numeric code as well as his own: it was the first five numbers in his Army serial number.

Typing in 24601, Jack frowned at the amount of missed calls and texts. He opened Mac's call history—repelling the little voice in his head that scolded him for this invasion of privacy with a louder argument that he was watching out for Mac. There were eight missed calls and twelve texts from Carlos.

Thinking about the fact that last time he'd seen Mac's Army buddy back in Puerto Rico, the guy had a barely-healed bullet wound in his leg, Jack checked once more to make sure Mac was still in the cockpit and then listened to the last of the three voicemails Carlos had left him.

" _Hey, Mac, it's me again. Uh…yeah, so I just wanted to make sure you were okay, man. You just…you seemed off when you left and…uh, I know your job's not the safest and all, but…. It was…it was good to see you, man. I owe you, y'know. A lot. Just…call me back, okay?"_

Jack leaned his elbows on his knees and hung his head.

Carlos was right; Mac had been off in Puerto Rico. When he'd learned that his friend was in that bank, Mac had all-but jumped out of the car to turn himself into a hostage, his full focus on getting Carlos out of there with little regard for himself. It hadn't been much different when they left San Juan for Pakistan and Mac had come up with an inspired method for diffusing the volatile situation in Islamabad, and then saved Bozer's hide with a shield built out of modern art in Sao Paulo yesterday.

Jack had talked with Freddie Tillerman before they'd left for San Juan, seeking ways to help his partner cope with the things life had thrown his way in the last few years. The former sniper turned VA group therapist had reported that Mac had been showing up to group more frequently, but wasn't any more forthcoming with details of the darkness haunting him. Freddie had seemed worried, but controlled, cautioning Jack to not take on too much of Mac's pain, even if it was still very much a part of the younger man's life.

Taking a breath, Jack crawled out of the seat and moved to the back of the plane before dialing Carlos. He didn't register the time difference until Carlos' sleep-heavy voice answered.

" _Mac?"_

"Hey, no, man, it's Jack Dalton."

Carlos cleared his throat and Jack heard rustling in the background as Carlos changed locations. _"Is Mac okay? Why are you calling from his phone?"_

"Yeah, he's fine, man. Look," Jack sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm sorry for waking you up. We've been on the road since we left you and I kinda forgot about time zones."

" _It's okay,"_ Carlos replied, and Jack heard the man utter a low hiss of pain as he moved. Jack knew that leg wound wasn't going to be very comfortable for a while. _"What's up?"_

"I kinda…listened to your voicemail," Jack confessed, wincing.

Carlos paused. _"You're worried about him, too."_

"Yeah, man, I am."

" _Worried enough to get him some R &R?"_

Jack leaned his forehead against the wall. "Yeah…this job. It don't really work that way."

" _He got a VA counselor?"_ Carlos asked.

"A what?"

" _A counselor—someone to talk to."_

Jack frowned, thinking of Freddie. "Nobody official, but yeah. He's got someone." Pulling away from the wall, he shifted so that he could see down the aisle and into the cockpit where he saw Mac laughing at something the co-pilot said. "Why? What aren't you telling me?"

" _You knew I met Mac when he first joined up—before he'd finished EoD training,"_ Carlos started.

"Yeah, I knew."

" _Well…there was this day early on—one of those ones that just…twist you up and you gotta…you gotta find somewhere inside of you to just stuff everything about that day away."_

Jack felt a knot of ice grow in his gut as he listened, watching Mac as he leaned his elbows on his knees to get closer to something the pilot was pointing at on the instrument panel.

"Yeah, I know those days."

" _We were out on a routine patrol, but…the convoy had to be rerouted. We lost three of our guys—one of them bled out in Mac's arms. He'd just met the guy the day before but…y'know. Still."_

"Yeah," Jack managed.

" _After that day he started doing this…this thing. Like he'd kinda fade out. Get this look on his face like he was a million miles away."_

"I'm familiar," Jack said quietly, thinking of Bozer telling him about a twelve-year-old boy with a thousand-yard stare.

" _Only one who could reach him, really, was Pena—he was his CO,"_ Carlos offered.

"I remember."

" _Anyway, Pena just…he saw the same thing the rest of us did, but he knew what to do about it. He gave Mac a box of paperclips—I remember he told Mac that when it comes to bomb dispersal, sometimes a paperclip can be the difference between walking away and going home in a box."_

Jack swallowed, eyes on MacGyver, head tipped back against the wall of the plane.

" _The way Mac messed with those paperclips, man…it's like the way some of the guys I knew used things like…snapping a rubber band on their wrist to keep them present, break them out of a flashback. You know."_

"You think Mac has PTSD?"

" _You don't?"_

Jack was quiet for a moment. "What happened in that bank, man?"

" _Most of it you know,"_ Carlos replied, his sigh tired and lean—the sound of a man who'd been stretched too thin to bounce back. _"But there was this moment…after Mac patched me up and managed to get a few people out. He just went dead-eyed on me."_

Jack felt the ice in his gut grow until he was almost shivering from it.

" _He stepped up, stopped the main guy from killing one of the bank tellers, and got his ass beat for it, too,"_ Carlos revealed.

"He never said," Jack muttered, his brows meeting over the bridge of his nose. "I mean, his face was a bit bruised up, but…."

" _I thought you guys had him checked out when you took me to medical,"_ Carlos commented, sounding slightly dismayed _. "That guy whaled on him, man. I'm talking cracked ribs, at the minimum."_

"Don't worry," Jack reassured. "I got him."

" _When he took those guys back down that hall with his coffee pot full of nitro or whatever it was, he just…he looked at me,"_ Carlos continued. _"And there was…. His eyes looked…."_

"Hollow," Jack finished, thinking about the moments after Argentina. _I should have stayed and kept trying._ After Canada. _I don't know what to do with this…hole. Inside me._ After Mexico. _I messed up, Jack. A lot, lately._

Mac was working on it, Jack knew. Dealing, reconnecting, healing. He'd been trying. But their lives didn't really allow for healthy coping mechanisms.

" _Yeah, that's it,"_ Carlos agreed. _"Hollow. I've seen too many guys slip through the cracks, y'know? They just…,"_ he sighed. _"They act like they have it all under control. They have it all together. But…they're just. They're breaking. Inside. Where no one sees. Until it's too late. And we lose them."_

"We're not losing Mac," Jack vowed, his voice tight with promise. "I am watching his back, and I'm damn good at my job."

" _I know, man,"_ Carlos allowed, sighing. _"And I'm glad he's got you."_

"You're a good friend, Carlos," Jack said, seeing Mac shift as though preparing to stand. "I'm going to make sure Mac calls you back, okay?"

" _Thanks, Jack,"_ Carlos said. _"Just…take care of him, yeah?"_

"Always."

Jack clicked off Mac's phone and tossed it back into the seat just as Mac stood and started to turn toward the back of the plane. Jack stepped to the side, appearing to have just vacated the plane's restroom, and nodded toward Mac.

"We getting close?"

Mac nodded. "Yeah. Landing in Berlin in about thirty minutes. You get some rest?"

"I'm good," Jack grinned, slapping the flat of his hands against his belly, willing the ice to melt.

It was barely dawn when they exited the plane and ran toward the hanger where the Phoenix was to have a vehicle waiting for them. The '80's model Volkswagen wasn't really Jack's idea of dependable transportation, but it was better than hoofing it into the city. He tossed his rucksack and rifle into the back seat and slid behind the wheel.

"No keys," he muttered, his palm tapping against the ignition. He tipped the visor down, hoping, but nothing. He glanced to the side at Mac, who was half-sitting in the passenger seat. "Matty give _you_ the keys?"

"What's the matter?" Mac pulled the side of his mouth up in a half grin. "You can't hotwire it?"

Jack reached down and pulled several loose wires forward. They'd been stripped beyond repair; clearly this car had been through a few drop sites.

"Can you?" Jack challenged.

"Give me a minute…."

Mac slid out of the car and stood for a moment, hands on hips, eyes rapidly skimming the contents of the old hanger. Jack just watched the kid think. There were times he imagined his partner's brain to be a revving engine, only idling when he slept. And, based on what he'd shared of his dreams, not much even then.

When he was working to solve a problem, like he was now, Mac's mental tachometer buried itself in the red.

"This thing is toast, bud," Jack shook his head. "Let's just hoof it."

Mac shook his head. "That's like…what, five klicks?"

Jack pulled out a laminated map from his TAC vest. "At least."

"Then same amount back to exfil…," he sighed, then allowed his shoulders to slouch. "I'm too tired for that," he confessed in a rare burst of vulnerability.

"Maybe we'll find another set of wheels along the way," Jack offered, leaning across the torn bucket seats and peering out at Mac.

The younger man glanced at the worn-out Volkswagen over his shoulder. "Naw, this thing's still got some life in it." He rotated, one boot heel digging a furrow in the dirt. "Sometimes things are hidden under the surface. You just gotta know how to bring 'em out."

Jack saw the moment the solution hit the kid; Mac jogged to the far end of the hanger and was back in minutes with what looked like a screw driver and a cable.

"Pop the hood," he ordered.

Jack started to comply when the release came off in his hand. "Uh…."

Mac looked up from the front of the car, his eyebrows folded in confusion. They smoothed out when Jack held up the release.

"This whole mission is like Murphy's Law, I swear to God," Mac muttered.

Jack climbed out of the car, watching his partner closely. Mac was their problem solver; having the kid defeated by a challenge even a little bit did not sit well with him.

"Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat," Jack shrugged. "Hand me your knife."

Eyebrows puckered once more in confusion, Mac handed him his Swiss Army knife. Jack slid his hand under the front grill of the hood until he found what he was looking for, then pulled out the screwdriver attachment from the Swiss Army knife and carefully removed the latch. Mac caught on quickly and moved around to the side of the hood, helping Jack lift the piece of metal.

Eyeing the engine, MacGyver tilted his head. "Let's just take the whole thing off," he said, nodding toward where the hood joint met the engine frame.

Jack complied, setting the hood to the side, then watched as Mac returned to what was left of the engine. The thing was a mess—it almost looked like someone had stripped it for parts. He was about to suggest walking once more when Mac pulled off his TAC vest then the outer layer of his shirts.

"Uh, bud?"

"I need a filter," Mac said, reaching back between his shoulder blades and pulling his T-shirt off over his head. "Didn't think you'd want to give me your sock."

"Not especially, no," Jack agreed, frowning at the faded bruises he could see wrapping around Mac's left side. He thought about what Carlos had said and couldn't help but wonder why Mac had kept quiet through two other jobs about his obviously wounded ribs.

Mac draped his T-shirt over the engine block, then turned to grab his long-sleeved shirt from where he'd dropped it. The rising sun hit his skin and Jack exhaled slowly as his eyes caught the scars that littered his young partner's chest and torso.

A bullet wound from two years ago, when they thought they'd lost Nikki, and one from Murdoc claiming to save Mac's life. A puncture hole from the thoracotomy Jack himself had been forced to perform on his partner, another puncture hole from where an arrow had pierced Mac's side, a long, pink line from where a bullet graze had nearly ended his life and the seam from the wound drain that had helped save it.

Pausing in the act of pulling his long-sleeved shirt back over his head, Mac caught Jack's eyes and froze.

"What?"

"Nothing," Jack shook his head. "Just waitin' on you, brother."

"Why're you looking at me like you're pissed off, then?" Mac grumbled, tugging his shirt in place and grabbing his TAC vest.

Because the kid bore too many scars for his age. And these were just the ones Jack could see in a five second glance. But Jack couldn't say that, not now. If Mac was already confessing to being too worn out for a ten mile round-trip, the last thing he needed was even the idea that Jack was upset about something.

"Clearly you need to brush up on your Jack Dalton expressions, my man," Jack said, bouncing his elbow against Mac's side as the kid bent over the engine once more, his discarded T-shirt gripped in one hand. "That is not my pissed off face. That is my, _I'm ready for burgers and beers_ face."

Mac huffed a small laugh. "Yeah, I hear you. Let me get this thing started and we'll be one step closer to being home."

"Unless Matty has other ideas," Jack grumbled.

"Go back behind the wheel," Mac ordered, sliding the T-shirt over the air intake and grabbing the cable he'd scrounged from the hanger earlier.

Jack did as he was told, wondering what his partner was going to be able to do with stripped wires from four decades ago. When the cable appeared between his boots from beneath the car's dash, Jack's eyebrows went up.

Mac was completely re-routing the entire electrical system.

"Grab that, will ya?" His voice echoed dully from within the engine block.

Jack reached down. "Yep, got it."

Peering through the windshield, he saw Mac was practically lying across the engine, his head and shoulders tucked into the engine block. Jack tilted his head. He supposed desperation did tend to make one sort of flexible.

After a few more minutes of clanging and several impressive curses emitting from within the dusty, worn-out engine, Mac was back in the passenger seat, leaning down below the dash near Jack's feet. Jack didn't miss the low grunt of discomfort as Mac folded his lean body to get to the wires needed.

"You okay, bud?"

"Fine," Mac replied, his voice strained as he reached up beneath the dash and practically into the engine itself. As Jack watched, Mac pulled out his Swiss Army knife once more, tugged on some other wires not easily accessed beneath the steering column, and stripped two of the wires. "Just…strained some muscles."

"You sure that's it?"

The wires sparked twice and then the engine turned over. Jack watched as Mac twisted the wires together, then pressed his hand on the dash to push himself upright.

"I'm sure," he exhaled. He looked over at Jack, his face flushed from exertion. "What else would it be?"

Jack shrugged, sliding the car into gear and pulling forward. "Just…you're still sporting some bruises from that bank job is all."

"That was a week ago," Mac scoffed. "I'm fine."

Jack let it go, trying to take a page out of Mac's book and compartmentalize Carlos' worried tone and cautionary words. They headed down the back road marked on the map provided by the Phoenix; Jack supposed it was a lucky thing the tank actually had gas in it with the way this mission had started. Avoiding traffic, Jack took a few more narrow side roads, but after slipping through one deserted intersection, Mac's T-shirt filter came loose.

"Lemme pull over," Jack offered as the engine coughed and sputtered.

"That'll take too long," Mac shook his head, leveraging his body through the window and reaching to hold the T-shirt in place.

"What the hell—!" Jack muttered, reaching over to grab the back of his partner's belt and keep him from face-planting on a German road. "You got a death wish or something?"

"Just keep driving," Mac called back. "I can fix this."

"Damn kid," Jack muttered, keeping hold of Mac until the younger man ducked back into the car. He met Mac's sunny grin with a glower. They were going to have a serious talk about safety protocols when this mission was complete, that was for damn sure.

Their mission was simple enough: break into the office of some Berlin big wig named Rainer and steal a formula for some kind of liquid explosive—Jack didn't need all the fancy words Matty rattled off…all he needed to know was that it could level a city block—before he completed a sale on the black market. In theory, a milk run.

Which is why it was such a surprise when things went so very wrong.

After hiding the car, they made it inside the office without incident; however, when Jack inadvertently triggered a silent alarm, they were faced with the choice of either getting out with their hides intact, or risk getting compromised while breaking into the wall safe and stealing the formula.

Jack knew which option had his vote. He held his gun at the ready, eyes on the only entrance.

"How about I charge 'em before they get in here while you head for the exit?" Jack offered.

"We're not leaving here without that formula," Mac practically growled, crouched next to Jack, his eyes darting around the room, his mind once more running at 5,000 mph. "I got an idea."

"You need my phone?"

Mac shook his head, grabbing a pen and stapler from the desk.

"My gun? My TAC vest? My sock?"

Focused on his solution, Mac moved away, heading for the wall safe.

Jack sighed, lifting the barrel of his weapon to sight on the door. "Guess I'll just stand here and look pretty, then."

It appeared the Phoenix hadn't accounted for the increased security around something that was going for $1.5M on the black market. The moment Mac opened the safe, the room began to fill with a noxious gas and Mac was suddenly shouting at him, pushing at his shoulder toward a door Jack _knew_ was covered by men with really big guns on the other side.

But, apparently guns were preferable to whatever it was being pumped into the room because for a skinny guy, Mac was wicked strong when his mind was set on something. In moments they were outside the office, hands raised in surrender to four well-armed guards.

"That did _not_ go as planned," Jack grumbled as his weapon was pulled forcibly from his hands.

"I'm sorry, Jack," Mac shook his head, stumbling a bit as he was pushed forward by one of the armed men.

Two of the armed men took the lead, two behind, boxing Mac and Jack in between them. The hallway leading away from the now-sealed, gas-filled office was narrow, security lights flickering on and off as they walked, giving their path an eerie overtone. They were being escorted, but Jack was hard-pressed to say where.

Or to whom.

"I should have seen it," Mac was muttering, almost to himself. "There was a wire and I knew as soon as I pulled the door…but I didn't think, I just…I was _trying_ to see all the angles, but this one I missed—"

"Whoa, easy there, bud," Jack soothed, walking next to Mac, hands in the air. "No one's expecting you to be all knowing."

"Yeah, but I—"

The man behind Mac growled something in German and cracked the butt of his weapon against Mac's back, causing the kid to stumble and careen slightly against the wall of the hallway.

"Hey!" Jack protested, reacting out of instinct. He turned, grabbed the weapon, and shoved the stock into the guard's face, breaking his nose and splattering blood everywhere. "That was unnecessary."

"Jack!" Mac called out a warning just before two of the other men turned their weapons on the ex-Delta.

Jack ducked just as Mac lunged and suddenly the close-quarter combat training that the Phoenix forced them to go through each month came in handy. Mac moved until his back was against Jack's and they fought as though their moves were choreographed. Jack felt Mac's back muscles coil as he swung a fist and he shifted his hips telegraphing to Mac when he was about to land a round-house kick.

In minutes they'd taken out two of the guards—one of them the unfortunate individual who'd hit Mac, starting this ruckus in the first place. Jack was about to grin at his partner, in his mind a half-formed plan of escape, when one of the remaining guards swung the barrel of his rifle like a bat and caught Jack across the temple.

Jack dropped. _Hard_.

It was as if the blow had turned something off inside of him. He was swimming through a black sea of pain, his body refusing to respond to any of his desperate commands. He tried to call out, tried to pull himself to full consciousness, but it was to no avail.

He felt as though he were trapped behind a two-way mirror.

A part of him was aware of being dragged, of desperate hands at his face, his neck, of being lifted, of a voice laced with panic and pain calling his name. But another part of him was floating in darkness, lighting strikes of pain slicing from his head through his heart and out of his fingertips.

He wanted to scream, to cry, to curl up until he was small and unseen.

Then there was nothing. For a long expanse of time. Stretching out around him like the barren landscape of the moon.

It felt like dying.

Like everything he knew and everything he meant was simply blanketed by an impenetrable darkness and he was lost. Silent and still. No voice, no contact, no pain.

Until.

"…not ready to let you go."

He knew that voice. He'd been _listening_ for it. _Mac_.

"They said if you wake up, you're going to be okay, so, uh…."

God, the kid sounded wrecked. He hadn't heard him sound this rough in a while.

"…you gotta wake up, okay? 'Cause…I can't…."

Mac was quiet for a bit and Jack realized with a fair amount of surprise that he was no longer in the hallway of the pyscho rich guy's office, but rather in a bed. Something soft and sterile-smelling. It didn't… _feel_ like home. But somehow he knew he was safe.

Which meant Mac was safe. Which meant he could relax and…god _damn,_ but his head hurt something fierce. It would be so nice to just slip back under the comfortable waves of darkness. Just go back to that place where it was quiet and painless—

" _Please_ , Jack. I know I screwed up, man. I am so, _so_ sorry. But…I really need you to wake up, okay?"

Jack tried, he really did. He wanted to open his eyes if only to erase that tone of desperation from Mac's voice. He knew _how_ to open his eyes, they just weren't cooperating. He tried to move his hand, give Mac some sign that he was still here, still with him, but even that proved impossible.

At some point the darkness must have won out because the next time he heard Mac's voice, he knew right away the kid was talking to someone else. Someone not him. There was an edge to the sound that was rarely present when he talked to Jack.

"…told you, I'm fine."

"Well, that's clearly untrue." _Matty_. Using a unique mix of her _I'm your boss so I know best_ and _I care about what happens to you_ tones. "If you're not going to get some sleep, how about you let me sit with him and you go get your hand wrapped at least?"

"This is nothing, Matty," Mac resisted. "I've had worse."

"That doesn't make it better, Blondie," Matty sighed.

Jack could hear her voice move around to the other side of his bed. He could feel more things aside from the pain in his head this time. Like the fact that there was tape on his face. And oxygen blowing through his nose. And something pinching the bend of his arm. And there was an annoyingly incessant beep from off to his left, near where Mac's voice was coming from.

And that was another thing. He could feel Mac's hand in his, the long fingers wrapped around his palm, fingers curled into a grip that made a statement. This kid wasn't going anywhere.

"Look," Mac said, a tired sigh slipping around the words. "I get that you're trying to take care of your assets, but…I did this. I need to be here."

Jack practically felt Matty's ire stand at attention. " _You_ did this."

Mac was quiet.

"You took the barrel of an HK MP5 and cracked your partner's skull."

"You know what I mean," Mac grumbled.

Matty was quiet this time.

Jack tried to open his eyes again, but as before, nothing worked. He couldn't even twitch his fingers. He started to wonder if something was really wrong with him—was he having an out of body experience? But…he couldn't see anything. He could only lie here, feeling his pulse beat against his temple, and listen to his partner bleed pain all over the room with every word.

"What are you doing?" Mac was asking.

"Calling someone who can talk some sense into you."

Jack heard the sound of a ring tone on a speaker phone and then moments later Bozer's voice swam up through the unnatural quiet in the room.

" _Matty?"_

"Bozer," Matty's voice became brittle. "I have someone here who needs you to talk to him."

" _Uh…Mac?"_

"Hey, Boze," Mac replied, and Jack could hear his walls slamming down. The vulnerability he'd shown earlier begging for Jack to wake was replaced by the protective shell—the alternate version of himself that was always at the ready. "How's the arm?"

" _Arm's fine, man. How are you?"_

"He's exhausted and needs medical attention," Matty answered for him.

" _Mac—"_

"It's not that bad," Mac protested. Jack felt the hand in his shift, fingers tightening as though anchoring himself in case, through the power of his voice alone, Bozer would be able to take him away from Jack.

" _Are we talking blowing-up-the-school-gym not that bad, or wrecking-your-bike-on-Harlow-Road not that bad?"_

Neither option sounded all that great to Jack.

"Uh…the first one?"

" _How's Jack?"_ _Riley_. Jack felt his mind tighten up at the sound of her voice, but the beep remained steady, his body unresponsive, his hand lax were it lay in Mac's grip.

"He's…still out," Mac replied, his voice betraying the tension that practically shook his frame through his fingers. "They said if he wakes up—"

"When," Matty broke in. "He's going to wake up, Mac."

Mac was quiet.

" _Heard you pulled some serious Van Damme shit on a couple of dudes,"_ Bozer said.

Jack felt Mac's fingers tighten.

" _Seriously, Bozer? Van Damme?"_ Riley scoffed.

" _What? Dude took out three guards! Who's better than Jean Claude? Segal?"_

"Bozer," Matty snapped. "This is not why I called you."

" _Right. Uh…sorry, Matty,"_ Bozer back-pedaled. _"So, look. Matty's there now, Mac. How 'bout you go get some rest?"_

"You guys want to know who's better than Van Damme?" Mac was saying, completely bypassing Bozer's very logical suggestion. "Dalton."

There was a strangely disconnected tone to the kid's voice. It made Jack focus every effort on curling his fingers around Mac's, fear slicing through him when he was still unable to move.

"He's saved my ass more times than any of you will ever know," Mac continued. "I mean, Matty knows some, sure. Files and reports and…whatever. But…none of you were over there. None of you ever saw what this man did to keep me alive in Afghanistan. Every damn day."

He spoke as though he was claiming territory in a battle they'd not yet started to fight. Jack felt the hairs on his arm stand up where Mac's skin brushed his. He _needed_ to open his eyes, to show this kid he wasn't losing him. If he'd been able to make a sound, he would have shouted in frustration in that moment.

" _Mac…,"_ Bozer started, but a quiet _shhh_ in the background told anyone listening that Riley was picking up on Mac's need to just…talk.

The kid didn't open up often, but when he did those closest to him knew to listen.

"There was this one time when I was…stubborn. He'd probably say I was being a dumbass, but…. Anyway, I got cornered by four hostiles and Jack…he, uh," the strangled sound of Mac's voice tightened something in Jack's chest, "he was still watching out for me. He took out four guys with two bullets. I mean…who else do you know who can do that, huh?"

"Not many," Matty admitted softly.

Jack registered a change to her tone, then realized it was reflecting the shift in Mac's. The kid's hand was getting heavier in his, and Jack felt warmth against his leg that he registered as Mac's body, probably leaning on the bed.

"He might…y'know…clown around a lot, but," Mac sniffed and Jack heard him clear his throat. The level of his partner's exhaustion was evident then: Mac never allowed himself to be this exposed to anyone but Jack. "It's all just…. That's not really Jack. He's like this…shield."

"He is," Matty agreed, almost as though she was willing to agree to anything if it got Mac to stand down.

A memory surfaced. One of Mac, broken and rain-soaked, admitting to staring down a darkness, and the only thing standing between it and him, was Jack.

"Y'know…my dad told me once," Mac said, his voice getting deeper, his words slower, "he told me that with the right parts…you can make anything. No matter what happened to us over there, Jack, he…he always had the right parts, y'know?"

" _Pretty sure he'd say the same thing about you,"_ Bozer replied.

Jack felt Mac shrug where he was slumped against his legs. "I always have to find them. Jack's got them…inside. Like he always just…knows who he is and what he needs to be. No question."

Mac was quiet for a moment and Jack realized they were all listening for him, waiting to see how long it would take until the kid gave in.

"I took my dog tags back," Mac said suddenly.

The air in the room tightened a bit; Jack felt it press against his skin as Mac's body became heavier against his legs. Matty hadn't known this, Jack realized, and there wasn't much she didn't know. Jack felt his mind tense, his body remaining unresponsive.

" _I saw,"_ Bozer informed them quietly from the speaker of Matty's phone.

"I just…I couldn't figure out…who _I_ was, y'know? And…I don't know. I've been looking for my dad so long…trying to figure out…why."

" _Why what, Mac?"_ Riley asked.

"Why he left me," Mac sighed tiredly, and Jack felt the kid's arm fold against his knee, his head lowering to pillow itself on the appendage. "Seemed like there should be some part of me. Something that was too much. Or not enough. I mean…we're all just a series of choices, right? All of us. The only thing that makes us relevant in relation to our world are the choices we make. Every day."

Leave it to the kid's big brain to pull out something philosophical on an empty tank.

"Dunno. It's stupid. Just…thought maybe if I could figure out why, it would help me make sense of…who I am."

Mac was quiet for a moment and Jack wondered if he'd finally fallen asleep. But, then—

"If the Army can define us by the dog tags…maybe I could, too."

Jack felt the weight against his leg increase, and the fingers wrapped around his palm relax. Save the beeping of the machine, the room was quiet for several minutes before Matty spoke again.

"Thanks, Bozer," she said quietly.

" _He asleep?"_ Bozer asked.

"For now."

" _Is Jack really okay?"_ Riley pressed.

Jack felt Matty hand on the side of his face. "He's okay. Get some rest."

He heard the click of the phone as she hung up on the other two, and with the heavy sigh that slipped from her diminutive frame he knew now would be the perfect time to open his eyes.

But he was just so tired.

"I know you're in there, Dalton. You're listening to everything we say," Matty said quietly. "Don't make a liar out of me. Our boy needs you."

Jack wanted to nod, maybe offer her a flicker of an eyelash. Something. But the quiet of the room, the weight of Mac's head on his leg, the comfort of his partner's hand in his all conspired against him and he was once more floating in a semi-darkness that offered solace and healing.

* * *

"Jack."

This time Matty's voice was less of a plea and more of an order. And something told him that he had better obey. He'd been sleeping long enough.

He blinked his eyes open, lashes gritty and clinging together. His body felt heavy, achy, and stiff. As if he'd been lying immobile for a long time. He flexed his hands, surprised to find them empty.

"There you are," Matty said, her smile the first thing he saw when his vision cleared.

"Here I am," Jack rasped, grateful when a straw was placed against his lips and the soothing coolness of ice water coated his dry throat. "Where's _here_ , exactly?"

"Army hospital, Frankfurt." Matty hoisting herself up into a chair next to Jack's bed.

"We're still in Germany?"

Matty nodded. "You've been here three days. More or less unconscious."

He reached up to where he felt tape pinching his skin. Running his fingers lightly over the two-inch gash that ran parallel to his hairline along his temple, he felt where they'd glued his skin together, using several butterfly bandages to keep the wound from re-opening.

One more scar to add to his collection.

"How long have _you_ been here?" Jack frowned, leveraging himself a bit higher in his bed, wincing as his head protested.

"Two days," she replied, her voice pitched almost purposefully low.

Jack noticed that the lights in the room were dimmed and the beeping he'd been hearing as a constant back-beat was muted. He was grateful—the way the pain in his head slid from his temple down his neck and wrapped around his chest told him he was going to be craving darkness and quiet for some time.

"Got on a plane the second I knew Mac got you out of that building alive and was trying to get you to the exfil with a cadre of Berlin's finest on his tail."

Jack felt tension flood his system, his muscles clenching at the mention of Mac's name. His lungs slackened when Matty tipped her head to the side and Jack instinctively looked across the room to see the kid on a small sofa, his lanky frame folded up like he was all of twelve, a blanket pulled up to his shoulders.

Matty continued, despite Jack's diverted attention. "The doctors said once you completely regained consciousness, they'd have a good idea of your recovery."

"Why's he all bruised up?" Jack asked, eyes skimming the purple mark on Mac's cheek and the bandages wrapped around his visible hand.

Matty gave him that head-tilt-side-eyed look that always put him on guard. "What do you remember?"

Jack shrugged; thinking made his head pound and that was all kinds of not fun. "We got to the safe, bunch of guards grabbed us, and then…curtains."

"I'm surprised you remember even that much. You have a severe concussion," Matty informed him. "The rifle cracked your sphenoid bone; you were extremely lucky that you didn't have a subdermal hematoma."

"I…have no idea what you just said," Jack confessed, "but I take it that means this headache ain't going away soon."

"Probably not," Matty informed him. "And you're off active duty for at least three weeks."

"You mean _we're_ off active duty," Jack corrected her, feeling his frown pull at the tape keeping the skin on the side of his face together.

"You and MacGyver are not one entity, Dalton, despite what you might think," Matty raised an eyebrow.

Jack took another drink of water, then let his eyes stray back to where Mac was lying on the couch, looking worn out even in his sleep. "He took out those other guards, didn't he?"

Matty paused before answering. "Yes."

"How?"

"You mean, did he use lethal force?"

"I mean," Jack let his eyes drift over to his boss, leveling a look at her that had made fellow soldiers shudder, " _how_."

"It appeared he was able to dismantle one of their weapons, then used one as a shield when the other fired, finally incapacitating the last guard before dragging you free."

 _Hands at his face, his neck, being lifted, a voice laced with panic and pain calling his name._

Matty glanced over at Mac. "I came because...you were hurt, badly, and MacGyver was not handling it well."

"'bout as well as I would have, I'm thinking," Jack said quietly.

"When you're feeling better, we really should discuss this codependency issue," Matty muttered.

That triggered another memory, the sound of Mac's voice pleading with him to wake.

… _you gotta wake up, okay? 'Cause…I can't…._

"Oh, that's bullshit and you know it," Jack sighed, letting his head drop back against his pillow, his gaze on Mac.

"Excuse me?" Matty retorted, clearly taken by surprise.

Jack slid his eyes over to meet Matty's. "It's not _codependency_. It's…loyalty. Need. Obligation. It's _family_ , Matty."

The connection between a young genius and the world-weary soldier was both a weight and a buoy. It tied them down and held them up and it had saved them more times than Jack could count. It was a bond that kept them alive…and made them willing to die.

"Jack, MacGyver is one of the most skilled agents we have," Matty said, leaning forward, her arm pressed against the mattress. "He can solve problems that would _defeat_ men twice his age with worlds more experience than he has."

Jack just stared at her, waiting.

"But we need him to be a competent agent, able to function on his own no matter—"

"We?" Jack interrupted.

Matty pulled back slightly. "Oversight."

Jack closed his eyes. "That's not fair," he said softly. "He's been through so much—"

"Same could be said of any one of us," Matty broke in.

"Not like Mac," Jack cracked his eyes open, thinking of the kid's scars. The ones visible, and the ones hidden, the ones not yet formed. He wanted to tell Matty about those scars…if only his head would just stop _aching_. "I could hear him, Matty," he confessed quietly.

"Hear him?"

"Before," Jack shifted uncomfortably. "It was like…being trapped inside myself. I felt his hand, felt him fall asleep across my leg." He glanced at Matty. "Heard him talk about his dog tags."

"You knew he took them from his personnel file, didn't you?"

Jack nodded. "Found out back when he was stuck in Mexico. Kept 'em with me until we got him back."

Matty pressed her lips together, looking down. "Mac's scars run deep," she conceded, surprising him.

"You only get scars once you've healed," Jack corrected.

He let his head rest against his pillow, bone tired despite having just woken up.

"That kid's a walking wound, and if you can't see that, you're not looking close enough. He needs a _break_ , Matilda. A real break—not building houses in Puerto Rico." He closed his eyes. "I don't think anyone really gets how much strength it takes to do what he does."

Matty was quiet for long enough that Jack opened his eyes just to make sure she was still in the room.

"I'll talk to Oversight. See if I can get orders changed," she conceded, steel in her voice.

Jack narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, you do that." He sighed; his vision was slipping a bit, imagined lights flashing in the corners of the room. "It's not like we haven't been kicking ass, right? Even if this last one was kind of a bust."

Matty nodded, looking back over at Mac. "I argued against Berlin," she said softly.

"Did you, now?" Jack blinked in surprise. "Why's that?"

"Not enough intel, tenuous situation," she shook her head, pushing up from the chair. "And agents who were too worn out to be on their game."

"Well, that's the truth," Jack rubbed at his head. It felt both too big and not big enough. Like it was made of glass and if he blinked wrong, it would shatter. "How soon we going home?"

Matty started for the door. "I'm going to talk to your doctor now," she said. "Keep an eye on our boy. I'll get you back to the States as soon as I can."

* * *

Mac slept through the rest of the day and into the night, with Jack fading in and out as various nurses and doctors came in to examine him. They removed his catheter and took him off of oxygen before letting him rest for the night. It was close to midnight before Jack heard Mac move.

He opened his eyes and watched as the blond rolled up on his elbow, his eyes on the floor, clearly thinking about standing. With a determined set to his shoulders, Mac braced his hands on the seat of the couch and began to push to his feet. Jack could see the moment every muscle in the kid's body protested that decision when Mac caught his breath.

"That's what you get for sleeping for twelve hours straight on a toddler bed."

Mac's head jerked up and the light that hit his eyes was reflected in the smile that slashed across his face. "Jack!"

"Is that my name? No one would tell me."

The smile slid from his face as Mac went pale, and Jack started chuckling.

"I'm just playing with you, brother."

Mac finally stood, his movements stiff. "That's not even close to funny," he grumbled, his voice scratchy from sleep.

"It was a little funny," Jack protested, the grin feeling at home on his face.

Mac shuffled over to his bed, stretching his arms over his head and rolling his neck. He looked ridiculously young with his hair spun around his head like a cyclone and an imprint of a seam running across a sleep-rouged cheek.

"You got blood on your shirt, there, bud," Jack lifted his chin to indicate the rust-colored smear along Mac's shoulder.

"Isn't mine," Mac reassured him with a yawn that nearly split his face in half.

"So I heard," Jack relaxed against the pillow when Mac dropped into the chair next to him. "You picked up a few fighting moves, huh?"

"You should know," Mac bounced his head back. "You taught 'em to me."

"Glad you paid attention," Jack grinned. "How'd you get me out of there, anyway?"

"I carried you," Mac replied, his eyebrows folding slightly over the bridge of his nose as he rotated his right shoulder as though to illustrate a point. "You're a lot heavier than you look."

Jack patted his stomach. "It's all muscle, hoss." He eyed Mac closely. "Wait…are you still in the same clothes from the Op?"

Mac crossed his arms over his chest. "It was a mission, not a fashion show."

Translation: _I didn't want to leave you_.

Jack took a breath. "Go shower. Matty has a go bag over there with some clothes for you."

"I'm okay," Mac protested, frowning.

"I'm here to tell you that you are not," Jack started to arch a brow, but stopped when it pulled at his broken skin. "You're edging onto ripe, my man."

Mac looked down at the floor. "Jack…."

"Hey," Jack reached over and grabbed Mac's knee. "I'm okay. I promise I'll be right here when you get out."

"You really scared me, man," Mac said softly, dropping his gaze to his lap, his whole body tense.

Jack smiled softly. "I know. Definitely wasn't in the plan to get my egg cracked."

"You just…you just _dropped_. You weren't moving and…," Mac swallowed hard, his lower lip trembling as he pressed his mouth closed.

Jack felt his heart shake a bit as he watched Mac struggle to control his emotions. The kid rotated his neck, but kept his eyes down. Jack knew he was fighting to open one of those filing cabinets in his mind and shove that fear down deep.

"You got me out of there, though," Jack pointed out, choosing not to think about Matty's description of Mac's rage, or the evidence of such on his partner's hands and face.

"I, uh," Mac cleared his throat, tilting his head a bit as though trying to find room inside for the words to escape. "I kinda lost it, though."

"You saved us, bud," Jack returned. "Just like you always do."

Mac pinched the bridge of his nose. "It was different this time."

"You mean because you didn't build a helicopter out of a rubber band and a paper clip?" Jack leaned forward slightly as he gripped Mac's knee tighter. "You used your training, and you got us out of there. You did your job, Mac. The end."

Mac nodded, dropping his hand. He looked at Jack and nodded again, a heaviness in his blue eyes that made Jack's heart ache, before offering Jack a small smile of concession.

"I'll go grab a shower."

He was still moving slowly as he grabbed the go bag and headed into the small bathroom, but Jack felt better when he heard the water turn on. He tried to stay awake, wanting to wait until Mac came back out to see how the kid was doing, but found his eyes slipping closed in minutes.

When he woke next, Mac was back on the couch across the room, dressed in black sweats and a gray Henley, but instead of being folded up on the impossibly small seat, he was reading something on his phone, the light illuminating his face and drawing shadows along the angles of his cheekbones. He didn't notice Jack's stare, so Jack allowed himself to sink back into to sleep, knowing that it was the quickest way to heal.

Matty negotiated their release from the German hospital two days later, with the promise that Jack would rest and check in with the Phoenix doctor regularly over the next two weeks. He'd felt stronger each time he woke up, but the whispers of a migraine haunted him after he'd been up for more than a few minutes.

This concussion stuff was a bitch.

Jack didn't argue the wheelchair this time. Mostly because he wasn't entirely sure he'd be able to walk in a straight line.

"Sorry," Mac muttered when the wheelchair bumped over an uneven threshold on their route to the transport.

"Dude, it's fine," Jack shook his head. "I'm not made of glass."

Mac didn't reply, just took the next transom crossing exceptionally slow. In truth, Jack's biggest concern during the last couple of days had been his young partner. Their entire stay in the German hospital, the blond had been a man of few words. He wasn't much of a talker anyway, Jack conceded, but this was a heavy kind of quiet.

He'd frequently checked on Jack, obliging the older man with information and the typical responses in their banter, but…there was something off. Something missing.

Unfortunately, they hadn't been alone much—between Matty and a hyper-vigilant hospital staff, Jack wasn't able to find time to convince Mac to open up about whatever was on his mind. He held his questions in check, knowing there would be time when they got back. He doubted the young genius was going to leave him alone before he was completely cleared by the doctors.

Jack eased himself into the back of the black SUV, Mac next to him, and Matty in front with the driver. The ride to the hanger where the Phoenix jet waited for them was quiet. Jack peered at his partner, watching as Mac once more stared out through the window as he had in the plane on the way to Berlin; this time, however, the darkness was in his eyes.

Jack had to admit he'd never seen eyes that blue carry so many shadows.

"So, I've been thinking," Jack said softly, drawing Mac's attention. "Freddie's got a fishing cabin up in like…Oregon or Washington. Someplace like that."

"Yeah?" Mac replied, a half-smile pulling up the corner of his mouth.

"I say we go up there for a few days. Commune with nature a bit."

Mac huffed a laugh. "You hate nature."

"I do not," Jack protested, smacking Mac on the chest with the backs of his fingers. "I just prefer…y'know. Room service."

Mac's smile widened and he looked back toward the window. "Yeah, okay," he agreed good-naturedly. "Assuming Matty gets my orders changed."

"Oh, she will, won'tcha, Matty?" Jack raised his voice so that it carried toward the front of the car.

Matty didn't bother to respond, but Jack saw the bemused shake of her head. When they reached the tarmac, Jack moved gingerly up the stairs and to the back of the plane. Matty positioned herself up toward the cockpit and immediately pulled out her laptop.

"Want to stretch out?" Mac said, offering the couch.

"See, this is the life right here," Jack grinned, sitting down and kicking his legs up on the seat as Mac grabbed a pillow and blanket from the overhead bin. "Finally getting treated in the manner I deserve."

"I swear if you say you should have cracked your head open sooner, I'm going up to sit with Matty," Mac threatened, his lips quirking.

Jack eased back against the pillow Mac positioned behind his neck. "Naw, bud. I'd trade sleeping in the barracks listening to you snore any day over this damn headache."

Mac sat down at the foot of the couch, turned sideways so that he could lean against the bank of seats behind him and still see Jack. "Is it bad?"

"Let's just say I have a general idea of what it felt like when Benny Dyson got his head shoved into a C-clamp during shop class."

Mac grimaced. "I'm sor—"

"Mac, I swear to God if you apologize one more time, _I'm_ going to go up and sit with Matty."

Mac chuffed. "Yeah, okay."

"We're good, okay? I swear," Jack held out a fist and watched as Mac instinctively lifted his right hand before quickly shifting to his left. "How's the hand?"

"It's…been better." Mac flexed his fingers, turning his hand over to stare at his bruised knuckles. He'd removed the bandage the day before. "Y'know, people never really get how much it hurts to punch someone in the face."

"I hear that," Jack nodded. "You need to talk about it?"

Mac shook his head.

"You sure?" Jack crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Mac slumped a bit further in the seat so that his head rested on the back of the couch.

"Maybe later," Mac conceded. "I kinda just want to forget about it for a little while."

"Mmmm-hmm," Jack nodded, waiting as Mac's eyes slipped shut. "You know that never works all that great for guys like us."

"I know," Mac replied tiredly.

The plane's take-off pressed them both back into their seats and Jack fought back a groan at the added pressure on his sensitive head.

"Get some sleep," Mac suggested, yawning and shifting until he was tucked comfortably into the corner of the couch. Jack decided not to comment on the fact that there were four empty rows of seats and yet Mac chose to situate himself at the foot of the couch where Jack was stretched out. "It's a long flight."

"I will if you will," Jack countered.

Mac sighed. "I'll try," he replied, eyes still closed. "And…I don't snore."

"Oh, you snore," Jack replied, snuggling down further into the couch and closing his eyes. "Trust me."

"Whatever."

The flight back to the States passed in no time—especially since both agents slept the entire way. Jack honestly couldn't have testified as to Mac's snoring this time; he was out and only jerked awake when the wheels touched down. What surprised him, though, was that he had to physically shake Mac awake.

The kid was usually so hyper-aware he registered the change in cabin pressure during the descent. Jack kept his hand on Mac's shoulder until the glaze of sleep disappeared from Mac's eyes and he wasn't looking around the plane with a shaky balance of panic and confusion.

"We're home, brother," Jack said softly. "You with me?"

"Yep," Mac said quickly, pushing upright in the seat. "Yep, I'm good."

He offered Jack a plastic smile, but it was enough for Jack to remove his hand and step back.

Gathering their things—which mainly consisted of their TAC vests and the go bag Matty had brought, now filled with their bloody clothes—they headed down the stairs and onto the tarmac, walking slowly, in step with each other, toward the hanger.

It was just before dusk in Los Angeles. The light had started its slow slip down the edge of the horizon toward the San Gabriel's and it was that moment of magic where the air lost the tang of pollution and felt crisp and almost cool. Jack took a slow, deep breath, then reached over and clapped a hand on Mac's shoulder.

"Feels good to be back," he said softly.

Mac offered him a half grin, the truth of it hitting his eyes, his face relaxing as he nodded. "I know what you mean."

"Dalton! Blondie!" Matty barked from behind them.

They paused, glanced at each other, and then turned to face their boss.

"Change of plans," she said, shoving her cell phone into her jacket pocket.

Jack felt himself instinctively tense. He opened his mouth, a protest poised on his lips, when she leveled her gaze on him and said, "We're postponing the debrief."

"Wait…we're what?" Mac asked, surprise clear in his tone.

Matty shrugged. "Jack told me enough in Germany to get started; we can wrap it up tomorrow."

"So…we just…go home?" Jack asked, his mouth folded down in frown of disbelief.

"Yes, Jack," Matty said, drawing her words out like stretched taffy. "You go home."

Jack looked over at Mac and saw his partner's grin matched his own. "Brewskis and Bruce, baby!"

"Seriously? _Die Hard_?" Mac said with a roll of his eyes, turning toward the hanger once more. "Again?"

"Hey, now," Jack cautioned, his step picking up. "Don't tell me you don't want to see Hans fall out of that window one more time."

Mac chuckled and started around to the driver's side of Jack's GTO.

"Whoa, hold up," Jack called out, holding up a hand. "Where do you think you're going?"

Mac arched a brow at him. "You're not cleared to drive."

"You just…you _never_ drive."

Mac pulled the door handle with a jerk, giving Jack a look. "I _can_ drive, y'know. I'm actually an excellent driver."

"Okay, Rainman," Jack chuckled, tossing his bag in the back and sliding into the passenger seat. "Just put the top down, will ya? Been closed in too long."

"I planned on it," Mac replied, starting up the car and lowering the convertible top. "Music?"

"Definitely," Jack leaned back in his seat and let the evening zephyr slip over him as Mac headed toward the highway.

He said nothing as Mac pick the station and smiled slightly when 30 Seconds to Mars sang about the _City of Angels_. Los Angeles certainly felt like that tonight. Orange and reds lit up the horizon, tinging gold at the crest of the mountains, the heat retreated with the coming of night, and for one moment Jack felt at peace.

Mac tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music; Jack thought about trying to engage his young partner about what had been weighing on his mind while they were in Germany, but there was something perfect about the evening. He didn't want to break it.

In typical L.A. fashion, the traffic was backed up. From where Jack was slouched in his seat, it looked to be some kind of construction. Mac's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, then over to the side of the road.

"Looks like they're diverting traffic," he announced, nodding toward a small orange sign posted at what appeared to be a frontage road.

"'kay," Jack agreed, not truly paying attention. It seemed very few cars were branching off, so he let himself relax against the seat.

He loved Los Angeles. It couldn't replace Texas in his heart, but it was _home_ in a way that Texas could no longer be. It held a piece of him—the version of him who'd had to redefine normal after the CIA, after Delta, the version of him who came back from Afghanistan, the version who knew Angus MacGyver.

The rough and tumble kid who grew up playing cowboy in Texas wouldn't even recognize the soldier who found peace inside the kinetic energy of this city.

Mac shifted in his seat, drawing Jack's attention. The kid's fingers had gone from tapping along to the music to white-knuckling the steering wheel.

Jack sat up. "What is it?"

"Not sure," Mac replied, his voice tight as he glanced repeatedly in the rear-view mirror.

Jack hazarded a glance over his shoulder, trying very hard not to twist his neck too fast and set off a migraine. A dark SUV was following them. Way too close.

"They plan on mounting us or what?" Jack complained.

"They ducked over as soon as I took the detour," Mac replied. "And no one has followed them."

Jack started to turn back around. "Well, could be they just—" He stopped when he saw another SUV in front of them, brake lights on. "Mac, take the ditch."

"I'll flip us," Mac protested.

"No, you won't," Jack replied. "Take it before they—"

But it was too late. The SUV from behind bumped them hard enough they rear-ended the one in front, the two larger vehicles caging the smaller GTO, and Mac and Jack were tossed forward against the dash as their car ground forcibly to a halt.

Pain echoed around Jack's head, muting all other sounds, as he pushed weakly back from the dash, blinking dazedly over at Mac. Dimly, he saw his partner slap at something just under the steering column, but before he could figure it out, their doors were opened, their seatbelts cut, and they were roughly dragged out of the car.

Jack was dropped unceremoniously on the ground, the impact jarring his already rattled head. When he started to push himself upright, he earned a kick to the midsection. The world spun sickeningly around him. He felt nausea build to a burn at the back of his throat. He was having trouble grabbing a breath, trouble settling his vision, and what made it worse, he couldn't see or hear Mac.

Pushing up once more on a shaking arm, he realized that one of the men who'd grabbed him from the car had turned their attention to his partner. The other was at Jack's back, pressing the barrel of a rifle to the base of his neck.

Mac was being held by two men dressed in all-black tactical gear and was dragged around the back of the GTO toward one of the SUVs. Jack watched as Mac fought, twisting his body like a live wire, fists clenched, head butting back against his captors. As the buzzing in Jack's ears faded, he could hear Mac shouting wordlessly at the men, fighting with everything he had to break free.

One of the men who'd grabbed Jack marched forward calmly. Mac's struggles had rucked up his Henley until a slice of skin was exposed at his midsection and before Jack even knew to call out a warning, the two men holding Mac released him, the blonde falling to his knees, off-balance, and the end of a stun baton was shoved against Mac's skin, the blue sparks snapping and sizzling.

The smell of ozone and burning skin kicked through the air. Jack gasped as he watched Mac fall to his side, his back arching as his whole body went taut before shaking violently. The man removed the baton as Mac went limp with a weak cry of pain.

"Stop!" Jack cried out, trying to get to his knees.

The man at Jack's back shoved him flat with a boot and Jack looked up in time to see the stun baton applied to Mac's belly once more. This time when Mac went limp, his eyes were closed. There was no fight left.

"Mac!"

The men bundled Mac into the back of the SUV. Jack tried to crawl forward, his head spinning violently, his who world turning sideways. The man who'd apparently been assigned to cover him spat on the back of his neck before walking away. Before Jack could do much other than roll to his back, both SUVs had sped away.

"Mac," Jack breathed, his eyes slipping closed as darkness claimed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**It's anyone's guess at this point**

 _ **Mac**_

He could hear a click. Steady, soft. Repetitive.

He climbed slowly toward awareness, trying to identify the sound. Everything in him centered on knowing what it was. An echo slipped around the noise and he realized it wasn't a click.

It was a drip.

With realization came consciousness and Mac slowly opened his eyes. The muscles across his belly ached; he could feel raw skin rubbing against the material of his shirt as he breathed. Swallowing roughly, he lifted his head, the muscles along the back of his neck screaming at him.

It took him several blinks to clear his vision. Brows folded in confusion and not a little bit of pain, Mac looked around, trying to get a sense of his environment. He was tied to a metal chair, his hands bound behind him, his ankles taped to the chair legs.

The chair was in the center of a room—empty of everything but construction debris. Wincing as he moved his head, Mac's eyes traced a series of metal pipes that ran along the ceiling of one cement-block wall, water dripping from a loose joint in the center of the wall. He let his gaze track the fall of one drop, closing his eyes when the water hit the cement floor and the spreading puddle.

Taking a slow breath, he tried twisting his wrists to see if there was any leverage in his bindings, the rough ropes digging into his skin. A strange _snap-crack_ sound popped his eyes open once more and he looked to his right to see one entire wall covered with plastic, wind tearing at the top corner of one side.

 _Where the hell was he?_

There were no other windows in the room—not even in the door situated in the corner of two walls. Daylight filtered through the semi-transparent plastic, telling Mac that he'd either been unconscious for the full night…or he was no longer in Los Angeles. He took a slow, steadying breath. While his body ached—especially the skin along his abs—he didn't feel the nausea and dizziness that typically accompanied being drugged.

Unbidden, the image of Murdoc's snake-black eyes and crazed grin shot into his mind's eye and Mac jerked involuntarily. The motion rocked the chair slightly and he blinked looking around the room in a panic.

There was no one there. No Murdoc. No IV.

"Get a grip," he whispered, admonishing himself. His voice was rough, his throat dry. It had been a long time since he'd had any water and that steady drip across the room wasn't helping any.

If this was Murdoc, he needed to get himself free and fast. After kidnapping his own kid, the man was liable to do anything to MacGyver; there was nothing left that Mac could use as leverage. His only option was to escape.

So…how did he do that?

What would Jack do? Probably shatter his arm slamming the chair to the ground in an attempt to break it. Not a great option. His dad—no, he wasn't even going to go there. How about Harry? Well, first…he'd talk until he found a solution.

"Okay, you have two immediate problems."

Mac pitched his voice low, twisting his fingers until he could feel the knot between his wrists.

"Getting free from this chair, then out of this room."

It felt like a bowline knot, which told him that whoever had him had some familiarity with the military. _And_ that it was going to be a bitch to get free. He felt along the edge of the chair until he found one of the screws keeping the back of the chair fixed to the seat.

"If the wind tearing at that plastic is anything to go by," he said, continuing his running, Harry-styled commentary, "you've got some elevation." He took a slow, deep breath. There was a tang of pollution, the taste of exhaust on the air. "Definitely a city."

The screw cut at his fingertips as he worked it loose.

"Getting out of the chair might take some time, but that's not the real problem is it?" He grunted as he almost lost the loose screw, catching it with his other hand and breathing a sigh of relief. "The real problem is who's going to be waiting for you on the other side of that door. Assuming you can get _it_ open."

Working the screw into the loop of the bowline, he looked up along the edges of the room once more, making sure.

"No obvious cameras in the room, but that doesn't mean much these days. They could be watching you. Or…they're planning on coming back."

The knot loosened and he started scanning the debris on the floor.

"Might help if you knew who grabbed you…," his breath caught as he thought about Jack, "or if they even wanted _you_ at all."

After all, he'd been driving Jack's car. What if they were after Jack, but got him instead? That had to mean Jack was safe, right? He couldn't remember if his partner had been hurt when they were stopped; the only thing he recalled was trying desperately to twist out of insanely powerful grips and the searing pain of the stun baton.

Wincing as he accidentally stabbed himself in the meat of his thumb, he shifted his focus from Jack and back to escaping.

"You work the problem or the problem works you, right, Pena?" he breathed. "Okay, Mac…focus."

The screw was doing the job, loosening the bowline. As he felt some give, he palmed the screw and closed his eyes, concentrating on the knot, working the ropes loose until he was able to get his hands free. Pulling his arms around to the front, he rotated his shoulders until he got feeling back into his limbs, then leaned over to use the screw to slice through the duct tape at his ankles.

Once free from the chair, he stood and began to work his way around the room, kicking through the debris, trying the door handle, assessing the space. Anxiety built in his gut as he tried to determine how much time had passed since he'd woken up—surely whoever put him in that room was coming back soon.

He made his way over to the plastic-covered wall, patting the—unfortunately empty—pockets of his sweatpants as he did so. He wished he'd taken time to change back into the cargo pants from the mission before they'd flown home from Germany. There were more places to hide potential tools in those pants.

As it was, he was without his knife, without his phone, and without his partner.

"Do _not_ think about Jack," he scolded himself out loud. "Jack is fine. Jack is probably looking for you right now. And he'd kick your ass if he thought you were panicking about him."

Working at the plastic wall from where it had loosened itself from the heavy-duty staples, Mac pulled a wide swath of it free, creating an opening from floor to ceiling. Wind hit him with enough force he stumbled back slightly as his eyes tracked downwards. His breath caught, his vision swam.

He was at least seven stories up.

Flailing out a shaking, desperate hand, he grabbed the edge of the wall for balance, rotating until he could feel the solid cement at his back. He closed his eyes.

 _Fuck_ , that was a long way down.

Breathing through his nose, Mac opened his eyes, a hand going to the stun baton burns along his abs and looked out through the opening at the building across the way. The sight that met his eyes set him back on his heels. He knew exactly where he was: downtown Los Angeles. He could see the Bank of America Plaza from where he stood.

"Okay," he exhaled, forcing himself to move away from the wall, and back toward the center of the room, ignoring the way the floor seemed to tilt underneath him when he thought of a sheet of plastic being the only thing between him and a seven-story drop. "Okay, so…good. This is good. Problem one, solved. Figure out problem two and you're half-way home."

It didn't take long to figure out that the door was electronically locked—with the keypad on the other side. Casting about through the debris, Mac felt his mind begin to buzz. It was a comforting feeling, a familiar hum of energy filling him, balancing him. He kicked free a few sections of cable, the copper wires exposed from their plastic casing.

Eyeing the metal chair he'd been tied to, then shifting his eyes to the unfinished light switch next to the door, Mac felt a solution click together in his mind like the pieces of a puzzle. He could almost see Harry's approving smile as he took the metal chair apart, using the loose screw as a lever for the other screws. The wire scraps, the dripping water—which became more of a make-shift fountain when he was done with the loose pipe—the light switch and the chair worked together to short out the door.

When it popped open, Mac took a breath before easing himself around the corner into an unfinished hallway—only to stop short at the sound of a slow clap echoing behind him.

Rotating slowly, Mac frowned at the incongruous sight of an office desk sitting in the middle of a large, empty room. Two sides of the room were covered in the same plastic as the room he'd just left, one wall was covered in glass, and the other made of cement blocks. Sitting at the desk was a vaguely familiar man dressed in an expensive-looking suit, and positioned in various places around the room were five men in black tactical gear.

Big men. With big guns.

The man at the desk continued to clap. Mac simply stood, his body tense, his eyes trying to widen enough to take in every detail of the room while calculating how quickly he could get to the open staircase he'd glimpsed before one of those big guns turned loose on him.

"From unconscious to escape in under fifteen minutes," the man at the desk called out, his hands flattening on the desktop as if he were trying to keep himself from doing something else. "I told you this was our man."

" _So you did,"_ replied a disembodied voice. It took Mac a moment to realize it was coming from a speaker phone on the desk. His eyes darted across the desktop, picking up a phone, a closed laptop, and a pen holder with a small American flag sticking out of the top.

"I believe you owe me $100, Heinrich," the man at the desk gloated, pushing himself to his feet and straightening his suit jacket.

" _I'll bring it with me,"_ the phone voice—Heinrich—replied. _"Be there tonight."_

Mac shot a look over his shoulder; the unfinished hallway emptied into the open stairwell that seemed to be positioned in the center of the floor, with a series of other doors like the one he'd just come through situated all around. The only thing keeping him from stumbling over the ledge and down seven stories was a metal scaffolding that seemed to be framing what would eventually become an elevator.

He swallowed and looked back toward the man at the desk. Buttoning his suit coat as he rounded the desk, the man approached Mac slowly and it was all Mac could do to not back up.

"Come here, come here, MacGyver," the man said, waving Mac forward, a wide, shark-like grin splitting his face. He paused at the entrance to the hallway where Mac stood.

"I'm good here, thanks," Mac replied, eyes darting to the armed guards who had moved automatically to flank their boss. "How do you know my name?"

The man looked affronted. "You don't remember me?"

At that, Mac looked closer. The man was what some would consider attractive—Caucasian, light brown hair slicked back from his face, light blue eyes. But the attractiveness was marred by the coldness in those eyes. The shark similarities didn't end at the grin.

Brain working overtime, Mac skimmed the man's frame, his eyes catching on a ring adorning the man's right hand. It was a heavy signet, with a blood-red gem in the center. He remembered that ring.

"Frank?" Mac tried, his voice stretching across the whisper of disbelief. "Frank Devereaux?"

The smile widened. "So, you do remember."

Mac blinked, the sensation of worlds colliding making him feel light headed. "Yeah, I remember I saved your ass from your psycho business partner last year," the memories began to play back like a sped-up movie reel, "in Barcelona."

Frank chuckled and turned to one of his guards. "This kid saved my neck making a bomb out of a soup can and some…duct tape. I mean, I don't actually know what he used, but it totally worked." The guard nodded, looking back toward Mac. "He's the one we need," Frank continued.

"Need for what?" Mac challenged, narrowing his eyes. "If you're in trouble again, you could have just asked for help."

"Not this kind of help," Frank shrugged, catching his right wrist with his left hand. "You're too much of a Boy Scout for that."

They were still several feet apart, Mac having not moved from the outside of the locked room. The tone in Frank's voice sent off every alarm in Mac's head and he turned abruptly, heading for the stairs. He didn't get more than three steps before one of the guard's caught up and Mac felt the cold heat of the stun baton against the back of his neck.

He couldn't even cry out.

The pain sucked his breath and caused every muscle in his body to clench at once, his heart stuttering in his chest. It was five seconds of pure agony and when it stopped, Mac realized he was lying prone in the hallway, his cheek throbbing where it had crashed against the cement floor. His breath rasped heavy and loud against the unfinished walls, echoing back to him a sound of disbelief and desperation.

Hands grabbed at his biceps and pulled him up to his knees. He coughed once, trying to get his lungs to calm the hell down so that he could maybe stop the world from spinning around him. He felt the men pull him forward and he stumbled, trying and failing to get his feet under him. They dragged him to the center of the room, across from the desk, and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground. He barely got his hands under him in time to stop his face from hitting the floor once more.

For one wild minute, he couldn't feel his body. He knew from military training that the electric shock from a stun baton could cause the victim to lose muscle control, stop a heart, cause unconsciousness, and wreak havoc on the central nervous system. His head spun as he breathed through the pins and needles sensation of his body coming back online, a silent _thank you_ that whatever entity watching over him kept him from peeing on himself.

His hands shook uncontrollably as he slid them under his chest, trying to bring his world back into focus. After several minutes, he felt his heart slow to a normal rate, his breath following suit.

"How about we start over?" Frank offered graciously.

Mac pushed himself into a trembling plank, then toed to a crouch before standing. He was aware that he was covered in construction dust, but knew if he bent to brush it off, he'd land on the ground once more.

"Tell your m-minions to put those damn s-sticks away first," Mac demanded, curling his hands into fists at his sides to hide their shaking, and stop himself from touching the new burn on his neck.

One of the guards stepped forward, shoulders bunched, and Mac flinched, but stared back, challenging him.

"Easy, Marco," Frank said, holding a hand out to the guard. "He's right. We can't talk if he's unconscious. Put them away," he glanced at Marco, "for now."

Marco complied and resumed his post near the opening to the hallway.

"Now, MacGyver—"

"How about _I_ start this time," Mac interrupted, his voice steadying, finally.

His mind was racing through facts like a cattle auctioneer on crack. He was in Los Angeles, downtown, one of the high-rise buildings under construction...who owned those again?

"Whatever you want me to do clearly isn't legal, or you wouldn't have resorted to the Brute Squad."

Albert Heinrich, that's the name. Big story about four buildings going up, environmental concerns, lawsuits, Mac remembered now. He started to wander toward the desk, keeping his movements as casual as possible while he continued to talk.

"Last time we met, you lost some money and were in over your head with your business partner—who, if I recall," he glanced at Frank and saw the man lift a hand to stop one of the guards from advancing as Mac traced a finger along the top of the desk, "was holding your family hostage."

He turned to face Frank, palming the small American flag from the pencil holder as he did so. He leaned against the desk, sliding the flag into the back waistband of his sweats as Frank began to track his own path around the room.

"I see your memory is still intact," Frank nodded.

"So, what's the deal, Frank?" Mac tilted his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "Did you lose _more_ money?"

Frank shot him a tight smile. "Attitude's intact as well."

As Frank continued to patrol the empty room, tapping experimentally on the plastic sheets blocking the areas where glass was not yet installed, Mac's mind continued to spin. Based on the light coming through the window, and his own bodily needs, it was mid-morning the day after they returned from Germany. Which meant he'd been missing for a little over twelve hours. And _that_ meant Jack would've have a full tactical team searching for him about eleven hours ago—assuming Jack was healthy enough to do so.

"You know who owns the building we're standing in, MacGyver?" Frank had made his way around the room until he was now standing somewhere behind Mac.

Mac moved away from the desk, wandering toward the window, arms crossed over his chest. He stared out across downtown Los Angeles. He didn't bother answering; he could tell Frank was winding up for his big pitch. He was too busy trying to calculate how Jack would figure out where he was, if there were any clues left behind at the crash site, if Frank's guards had triggered Matty's Spidey Senses in any fashion.

"Albert Heinrich. The man is very…powerful," Frank said, his voice shifting as he continued to move around the room. "Powerful, ruthless, and probably one of smartest men on the planet."

Mac felt his mouth tug in a rueful grin at that statement, knowing what Jack would have said in reply. He turned around, putting his back to the window, and leaned on the narrow metal ledge that bisected the glass, watching Frank. His hands were behind him, supporting his lower back as though he were casually slouched, but in reality he was pulling the flag from his waistband and wedging it into the soft epoxy that held the metal frame to the glass.

Upside down. Military sign of distress.

If Jack managed to get himself in any of those high-rises across the way, he'd know exactly what it meant.

"He's had designs to control as much as he possibly can for years and he's about to make a purchase, something that will make him unstoppable," Frank continued. "But what he doesn't know is that I'm going to _use_ that purchase," Frank made his way to the front of his desk and for one terrifying moment, Mac thought he'd noticed the missing flag, but he just boosted himself up to sit on top, "to bring him to his knees. And you're going to help me."

"Why would I help you?" Mac scoffed.

"Because I'm going to make you," Frank replied with a casual shrug.

Mac felt his mouth go dry. Maybe he'd been wrong this whole time. Maybe they _did_ have Jack. Maybe they had him and were planning on using him as leverage. Mac stepped forward involuntarily, fear that Frank was going to threaten Jack overpowering logic that he needed to play this out.

"What are you—"

"You see, MacGyver," Frank talked over him, "I not only remember you…I've thought about you every day since you pulled me out of that train car and stopped my partner from killing my family. Or…at least that's what you _thought_ you did."

Mac frowned, hands curled into fists at his sides.

Frank smiled, pushing off of the desk, and closed the distance between himself and Mac. As though signaled by some kind of mental command, two of the five guards in the room moved forward, flanking Mac, their eyes on Frank. In that moment, Mac was grateful for blind obedience—emphasis on the 'blind' part as the flag signal continued to go unnoticed.

"Do you remember the name of my partner, MacGyver? The one you…saved me from?"

Mac blinked. What was it…Wagner? Maybe?

"Rainer," Frank supplied. "Kurt Rainer."

He smiled, but Mac's mind had gone super-sonic. Rainer was also the name of the man who was going to sell the formula he and Jack failed to steal. And if Rainer still had the formula….

"Pretty much the wealthiest man in Germany at this point," Frank continued, close enough now Mac could smell coffee and onions on his breath. "And as heroic as your actions were that day, all you did, really, was delay my plan for a little while."

"What plan?" Mac spat, body tensed. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him to run, but with Marco and his pal on either side of him, he knew he wouldn't get far.

"I'm going to hold one of the biggest, most influential cities in America hostage, and I'm going to pin the terrorist act that I'll commit in order to do so on Kurt Rainer, inevitably increasing tension between America and Germany," Frank leaned forward, his shark-dead eyes sparking light as he continued to speak. "Meanwhile, I will destroy Albert Heinrich, all of his buildings, all of his _plans_ , take over his company, and finally," he closed his eyes as though in pleasure, "win."

Mac couldn't help but stare with horror. "You're insane."

"Maybe," Frank said, tilting his head a bit before opening his eyes, "but that doesn't make what I just said any less true."

"There's no way I'm help—"

Frank reached out a hand, lightning fast, and closed strong fingers around Mac's windpipe, choking off both his words and his air. Mac wasn't anticipating any action from Frank; his entire focus had been on the two armed men on either side of him. He instinctively grabbed for Frank's wrist, his hands still shaking from the effects of the baton.

"See, here's the thing, MacGyver," Frank continued calmly. Mac tried to hold still, desperate for breath. "I saw what you were capable of—you might be the only person in the world able to match Heinrich in a tete-a-tete. So I told him about you. I _sold him_ on you. So that he could use you. But what he doesn't realize is that…," Frank leaned close, his lips on the shell of Mac's ear as his fingers tightened around Mac's throat, "I'm going to use you first."

He released Mac with those words and the blond fell to his knees, a hand at his throat, gasping and coughing as he fought to drag air into his starved lungs. Emotion tore through him fueled by rage and betrayal.

He couldn't believe he'd been so _wrong_. Twice. _Twice_.

"How?" he rasped, looking up at Frank, tears of pain burning the backs of his eyes. How had he used Mac so easily? And how had the Phoenix not known?

"Fair question," Frank conceded, moving away from Mac and back across the room, this time leaning against the cement block wall. "Heinrich is going to purchase a formula from Rainer," Frank said, looking at his signet ring and missing the utter despair that washed across Mac's expression, "which he has no idea how to use. He thinks you're going to help him apply it to some…fusion…something, I don't even know." Frank waved a hand airily as though he couldn't be bothered. "But instead, you're going to use it to help me take down every single one of his buildings."

"Killing who knows how many people in the process," Mac growled, one hand still at his throat, his body taut.

Frank shrugged. "There will be some acceptable losses."

"You son of a bitch," Mac whispered, rage stealing his voice. "I believed you. I…I _saved_ your life!"

"We all make mistakes," Frank sighed, as though utterly bored by the whole exchange. "Listen, the sooner you give in to the inevitable, the sooner we can get out of this dust-covered fallacy of an office and—"

Mac shot to his feet, grabbing the stun baton from its hook on the TAC vest of the nearest guard. In one motion, he flipped it to its highest setting and jammed it into the throat of the guard, whirling to kick out at another guard coming at him, landing a solid impact to the man's solar plexus.

"Don't shoot him!" Frank was shouting. "I need him in one piece!"

When the first guard dropped, jerking and twitching from the currents running through him, Mac turned the baton on the next guard to come at him, but wasn't fast enough for the two others. One landed a vicious punch to Mac's kidneys, the other to his gut. He dropped the baton and fell to his knees, curling forward instinctively to protect his midsection.

Another punch across his mouth split his lip and he felt blood running down his chin. Gasping, he choked slightly on his own blood when one of the guards grabbed him by his hair and jerked his head back until his throat was stretched back and exposed. He blinked his blurred vision clear, seeing Frank stand over him.

"Y-you…you d-don't want to do this," Mac gasped.

"The list of things I don't want is endless," Frank said, his eyes flat as he regarded MacGyver. "You tell me what to do with one of them."

"Did you even h-have a family?" Mac asked.

"Oh, that part was real enough," Frank replied. "But, as far as they are concerned, I'm just an architect with a dream." He spread his arms wide.

"I'm never going to help you," Mac snarled, his neck muscles spasming from the angle they held him. "There is n-nothing you can do to me that will make me."

Frank's mouth shifted into what could almost be a sort of a smile. "We'll see about that."

The last thing Mac saw before darkness consumed him was Frank's blood-red signet ring.

* * *

 **Frontage road detour  
12 hours earlier**

 _ **Jack**_

Lights.

Hundreds of them. Spinning and flashing and bright and _holy hell,_ stabbing his head through his eyes. What the…?

"…'s me, Jack. Jack! Stop!"

"Ri?" Jack managed, realizing suddenly that he had one of her narrow wrists trapped in his grip.

"Yeah, it's me," Riley said, her other hand cool against the side of his face. "Take it easy, okay? You with me this time?"

"What…? Where's—"

 _Mac_.

Jack sat up quickly, immediately regretting that decision as the world lurched and pain cut through him as slick and clean as a knife. He was barely able to turn away from Riley before losing his most recent meal on the ground next to him. Retching brought a whole new level of pain to his head and he was pretty sure his skull was about to split in half from the pressure.

"Oh, fuck me," he whispered, holding himself up with one shaking arm, his other hand holding the wounded side of his head.

He kept his eyes closed, breathing through his mouth so the smell didn't send him over the edge, and fought for control. His last moments of consciousness crowded behind his eyes, each vying to be the first in a series of nightmares. After a moment, he registered Riley's voice uttering nonsensical, reassuring words, her hand rubbing soothing circles against his back, and he sank back against her.

"They took him," he rasped, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth.

"We know," Riley told him, and shoved a bottle of water into his hand. "Rinse out your mouth. The EMTs are coming back."

"You know?" Jack filled his mouth with water, then spat it out. "Wait…what EMTs?"

"Ours."

Jack allowed Riley to push him upright, registering that the lights he'd been seeing were emergency vehicles now surrounding the wrecked GTO and, apparently spare, black SUV. Night was gathering close, but twilight hadn't quite let go of the horizon. Which meant hadn't been that long since they'd grabbed Mac.

"There's time to track them," Jack muttered, pushing at Riley so that he could roll to his side and attempt to get on his knees.

"Whoa, hold up, cowboy," Riley protested, both hands on Jack's shoulders, keeping him in place. "You just ralphed all over the Santa Monica Freeway," she ducked her chin to catch his eyes. "Let the EMTs check you out and make sure your brain isn't permanently scrambled."

"Riley," he reached up to grasp her arm, "you don't understand! They took Mac!"

"I _do_ understand," she corrected him. "Matty's on it. Why do you think we're here?"

He blinked. He hadn't thought about that.

"Just take a breath and let's make sure you're okay."

He shook his head gingerly. "You let EMTs check me over they'll take me to the hospital and I won't be able to—"

"Hey, hey, easy, big guy," Riley matched him move for move as he staggered to his feet, keeping her hands on his shoulders, her body blocking his path. "I told you. They're ours."

Jack blinked at her, then watched as two men carrying orange med kits jogged forward. Riley stayed in his eye line the entire time they examined him. He answered their cognition questions, pain level questions, stalwartly dealt with them shining those damn lights in his eyes, then exhaled as they informed him that he seemed fine, just needed to take it easy—and no driving.

"Matty's waiting for us," Riley told him. "These guys will clean up the wreck and haul your GTO to the garage."

"You think I care about my damn car right now?" Jack pointed toward the crushed vehicle, wincing as the motion stabbed a sharp pain through his head. He reached up to palm his temple.

"You gonna behave?" Riley asked, her voice softening.

"Riley, I swear to God if you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going to bust some heads," Jack growled.

Riley rolled her eyes, then hooked her arm through his, guiding him to a large, black van. "Other than your own, you mean?"

Jack felt his chest constrict like a vise, pressing the air from his lungs as Riley escorted him forward. He tried to pull in one easy breath—wasn't that what he was always telling Mac? Just one easy breath….—but found pain and panic weren't a great mix when it came to combat breathing techniques. Riley drew a bottle of Advil from her jacket pocket and handed it to him. He dry-swallowed four before she slid the van door open and he winced at the blue lights that illuminated the interior from a bank of monitors.

"He get checked out?" Matty asked, looking at Riley first.

"He did," she reported. "Just like you thought—shaken, not stirred." Riley slid the van door shut behind him as Jack dropped into one of the bucket seats next to Matty and tried to focus on the dozen or so computer screens in front of him.

"Someone want to tell me what the _hell_ is going on here?" Jack demanded.

His eyes shifted from Riley's tired expression to Matty's tense features. He saw Bozer advance, holding a bottle of water in one hand, his other immobilized by a sling. He batted away the water Bozer tried to hand him and leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"I just saw my partner tased unconscious and hauled away by a bunch of super soldiers and you all are acting like this was a sanctioned mission."

"Not sanctioned," Matty replied. "But it's not wrong calling it a mission."

Jack sat back, arms crossed over his chest. He recognized that tone: someone had Matty the Hun's balls in a vise.

"I told you I argued against Berlin," Matty reminded him.

Jack nodded.

"Part of that was because the man who had the formula you were to steal was Kurt Rainer," she told him. "And the buyer was Albert Heinrich."

Jack stared at her, deciding to skip over the fact that this intel was usually given to them _before_ they infiltrated the bad guy's ultra-secure building. "Those guys supposed to mean something to me?"

"Maybe not," Matty sighed, reaching forward and hitting a few keys on the keyboard as the van jerked into motion. "But this might."

Jack looked at the screens and felt the blood drain from his face as he saw black and white security camera footage of MacGyver fighting two men before pulling a shelf down on one and then grabbing a cowering man and running out of frame. Matty clicked a few more keys and more pictures came up—all black and white, all grainy, but clearly Mac and the man he'd pulled along with him in the previous frame.

"I know that dude," Jack said, pointing at the man next to Mac. "Something French."

"Frank Devereaux," Matty filled in. "Mac saved his life last year."

Jack snapped his fingers. "That's right—I was recovering from that whole, _Jack gets to be a blood bank_ solution."

Matty clicked to a few more pictures. "The moment you and Mac left the hanger, I got an alert from Oversight." The brittle note in her voice thinned out and Jack shifted his eyes from the computer screens to his boss. She was starting to worry him. "The second team we sent in to get the formula was taken out. Rainer completed the sale to Heinrich. And Heinrich is coming here, tonight." Matty looked over at Jack. "To meet up with his business partner."

Jack tilted his head. "Don't tell me. Frenchie?"

Matty nodded. "Our intel shows that Heinrich has secured parts for a cold fusion bomb, but needs a physicist to make the formula work."

"Or a genius kid who just so happened to be an EOD tech," he finished.

"I sent a team after you both, but lost you on the I-10," Matty started.

Jack shook his head. "It's not your fault; they knew we were coming. Set up the detour."

"Yeah, but…how?" Riley broke in. "Your orders didn't get changed until you got home."

Jack and Matty exchanged a look. "Who all was on the tarmac?" Jack asked.

Matty looked over at Bozer. "I want you to ID every person who was there to greet the plane when they landed, have a security team haul them in for questioning, and have their homes searched."

Bozer's eyes widened, but he nodded and moved away to start in on the orders. Jack knew whoever betrayed the team would most likely not see the light of day anytime soon, based on the expression in Matty's dark eyes.

"How did _you_ find us?" Jack asked.

Matty quirked a smile. "For all his ability to improvise, MacGyver is excellent at preparing for a just-in-case scenario," she told him. "He'd installed a special OnStar in your vehicles that goes straight to my phone."

Jack recalled seeing Mac slap at something under the steering column just before he was hauled out of the car. Damn kid. Between finding him in the rubble of a building in Farah to triggering the cavalry if he got in a wreck, Mac was aces at making sure Jack was covered.

Just not so much at keeping himself out of trouble.

"Oversight knew about this whole…Devereaux-Heinrich connection?" Jack asked.

Matty shifted her eyes to the side, causing Jack to frown. If Cage had still been with them, dollars to donuts she'd have cracked down hard on that tell. Matty was hiding something.

"It's not clear," Matty replied. "But the urgency to get the formula was clearly worth risking two teams." She sighed. "And now I have an agent compromised."

"So, you think Heinrich has Mac," Jack concluded.

Matty nodded. "Only trouble is…where?"

"I may have an idea about that," Riley told them.

Jack and Matty both looked at her. "Well…?" Jack prompted.

"I need my gear," Riley winced, apologetically. "We're almost back to the Phoenix."

Jack sighed, putting his aching head into his hands, his elbows balanced on his knees.

"I'm sorry, Jack," Riley rushed out. "I just needed to get here and make sure you were okay—"

"Naw, it's not that, kiddo," Jack replied, exhaustion kicking his Texas drawl up a notch. "It's just…it's too soon after Mexico, y'know?" He lifted his head, but didn't look at either of the women across from him. Instead, his eyes drifted to the grainy black and white image of Mac using his body as a shield to get Frank Devereaux out of harm's way. "It's too soon for him to be on his own again like this."

"MacGyver is a skilled agent—" Matty tried.

"Stop, just…," Jack sighed, holding up a hand. "Just stop, Matty." He looked over at her. "You just told me our bosses knew what we were walking into—knew the potential risk to one of their _skilled agents_ —and didn't bother letting us know."

Matty looked down.

"Not only that, they let us go in there with our tanks nearly empty." He sat back, rubbing at his wounded head. The Advil had taken the edge off, but he still felt a bit like his skull was made of blown glass. "And now these cold fusion bomb psychos got Mac. Don't matter how _skilled_ he is. He's in big time trouble. We all fucked up on this one. Especially Oversight."

Matty met his eyes. "I won't argue with you," she said quietly, then took a breath and squared her shoulders. "Mostly because it's not going to get us anywhere."

The van pulled to a stop and Riley reached for the door handle, but Matty stopped her.

"This discussion does not leave this van, do you understand me?" She met each of their eyes individually. "Mistakes happen. Even by Oversight. But I will _not_ have any of _you_ compromised because you let your anger and worry about MacGyver overpower your knowledge of the chain of command. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Riley replied at the same time as Bozer nodded, "Crystal."

Matty looked directly at Jack.

"When we get him back, we revisit this conversation," Jack replied.

Matty nodded. "Agreed."

An hour later, Riley had taken them through her idea. Jack was stretched out on the couch in the War Room, a cool towel provided by Jill across his eyes, his feet propped up.

"That's, like, what…250,000 square feet to search?" Bozer posed, his good arm cradling his sling. "I mean, four partially completed high-rises…that sounds impossible."

"Mac always says just 'cause something's impossible doesn't mean you shouldn't try," Jack retorted from under the towel.

"He's right," Matty replied, eyeing the board. "Riley? Can you do this?"

Jack could tell she'd bought into Riley's idea that Heinrich would have stashed Mac in one of the high-rises he was building in downtown Los Angeles. Because of zoning restrictions and environmental discrepancies, construction had been halted, leaving the tallest completed building at ten stories, the rest around seven or eight. If Heinrich was looking to build this bomb in retaliation for complicating his legacy, doing so in one of those buildings would be poetic.

"It's definitely possible," Riley said, shifting her laptop into a more comfortable position across her legs. "I can, um…borrow…the security cams in the surrounding buildings and do a floor-by-floor search, and if we can't see in, we can use the system I rigged up in Shanghai when the EMP cut the power to pick up heat signatures."

"How long, Riles?" Jack asked, not taking the towel from his eyes. His whole body felt like it was rung out and he was pretty sure his eyes were watering from the pain in his head. No way was he letting anyone see _that_.

"Rough estimate? Six hours?"

"Dammit," Jack reached for the towel, but jerked in surprise when a hand rested gently on his.

"Easy, Dalton," Matty said softly. "They need him, remember. They aren't going to hurt him."

"They _already_ hurt him, Matty," Jack protested, this time pulling the towel free and easing himself up. He rubbed a hand over his short hair. "They zapped all the fight out of him." He looked over at his boss. "And believe me, I know how much fight that kid has in him."

"What makes them think Mac'll just help them anyway?" Bozer spoke up from behind the couch where he'd been pacing. "Just because he did…whatever MacGyver thing he did to save Devereaux a year ago…how do they know he even _can_ help with a…a cold fusion bomb?"

Jack hadn't looked away from Matty. "Do they know about the Phoenix?"

"No," Matty replied immediately. "They don't know he's a government agent. But…they do know the think tank cover," she sighed. "And they may have done their own research about Mac."

"Research?" Bozer asked.

"Oversight was informed yesterday that Mac's military file was hacked," Matty said, carefully keeping her voice even.

"Yesterday," Jack replied, rotating his stiff neck. "And we're just finding out about it _now_?"

"The connection wasn't drawn until we discovered that it was Mac who'd been taken and not you, Jack," Matty informed them. "After all, he was driving your car."

Jack rubbed his face and stood up, wavering slightly on his feet before gaining his balance and picking up the pacing where Bozer had left off. Half thoughts and partial memories flitted through his broken head like a skipping record.

Teasing Mac about being named after a hamburger…. Counting down his last 64 days until he left Afghanistan…. Re-upping without a backwards glance toward Texas just so he could keep watching the kid's six….

"He might've been the slowest bomb tech on the planet," Jack muttered, rubbing at the back of his neck, "but I've never seen anyone move so fast to save someone."

"You mean like jumping out of a moving car to make himself a hostage in a bank robbery?" Riley asked, her fingers flying over her keyboard, eyes never leaving her screen.

"Or making a slide worthy of stealing home to catch a brother who's about to fall off the side of an embassy?" Bozer asked, rubbing at his still-healing shoulder.

"Or destroying my War Room to replicate the inside of a ship?" Matty interjected softly.

"We gotta find him, Matty," Jack said.

"He's tough and he's smart," Matty replied. "He's not going to let these guys get to him. In fact," she lifted a shoulder, "I've rarely seen him crack. I think we need to give him more credit."

Carlos' worried voice slid through Jack's mind like an earworm. _They act like they have it all under control. They have it all together. But…they're just. They're breaking. Inside. Where no one sees. Until it's too late. And we lose them._

"Okay, I've started the process," Riley said, looking up at the screen. "It'll take a few hours to triangulate, but we should be able to start scanning the buildings then."

"Dalton, get some rest," Matty ordered.

"Wait, I can—"

"You can _sleep_ ," Matty replied. "You're swaying on your feet. Sleep until the program is ready. I'm going to get a team put together to be ready to charge the building when we figure out which one it is."

"I'm leading that team," Jack informed her, sinking down to the couch.

"We'll discuss it later," Matty replied. "Bozer, you're with me."

As Bozer and Matty left the room, Jack and Riley exchanged a glance.

"I'm leading that team," Jack repeated.

"Matty's not going to like that."

Jack leaned back against the couch. "Don't much care," he replied, closing his eyes. "So long as I can walk in a straight line, I'm getting that kid back."

"Still don't see how they think they're going to get him to help them," Riley grumbled. "Not like it takes a lot of research to see the kind of person Mac is. No way is he helping anyone hurt people."

"You got that right," Jack muttered, letting exhaustion win for the moment.

His sleep was peppered with disjointed images and memories, all of them of Mac—face tense and hurting, eyes red-rimmed from tears, jaw tight with anger, fists bloody from fighting, mouth relaxed from mirth. He could hear his partner's low voice explaining things he'd never in a million years understand, laughing at something they were discussing, crying out in pain, calling for him—

"Jack!"

With a gasp, Jack sat up, disoriented and achy. It took him a moment to ground himself in his surroundings: Phoenix Foundation, War Room, couch. Riley sat on the edge of the couch, a hand on his chest.

"You okay?"

"Yep," Jack nodded too swiftly, dragging a hand down his face. "Yep, I'm good."

"You sure? Because you were shouting," Riley told him.

He blinked. "I was?"

"You sounded…terrified," Riley said, withdrawing her hand, a frown marring her pretty face.

"I'm okay, Riles," he said. "Just…bad dreams."

She studied him a few more moments, then stood up. "Jill brought food. And pain meds. Plus the system's almost up and running."

"How long was I asleep?" Jack asked, swinging his legs off the couch and grabbing the bottle of aspirin.

"About four hours," Riley told him, watching as he unwrapped a sub sandwich. "You needed it."

He didn't bother arguing with her; he already felt better. Even the ache in the back of his head had tapered. Dawn was peeking through the blinds on the other side of the unfrosted War Room windows. A rough count put Mac as having been missing for about eight hours.

"What's next?" he asked, popping open a can of Coca-Cola.

"We check the cameras," Riley sighed. "And…hope."

Matty and Bozer returned. They ate. They took breaks in shifts to freshen up. Grabbed copious amounts of caffeine. And they watched the screens. Facial recognition didn't do much, even though Riley had it running and searching for Frank Devereaux and Angus MacGyver.

The clock had started to edge onto four hours when Jack finally saw something.

"Wait," he called out. "Camera three, go back."

Riley frowned, dialing in to camera three and backing up thirty seconds.

"Goddamn, if that boy ain't a soldier," Jack grinned, moving closer to the screen. "That's him. That's him, he's there."

"What are you…?" Riley furrowed her brow, staring at the screen. "I don't see anything."

Jack pointed at the screen. "Zoom in here, right here." Riley did as she was told and Jack felt the room lean in. "See it?"

"Is that…that looks like an upside-down American flag," Bozer said, squinting.

"You're damn right it is," Jack turned around, a grin on his face. "He knew we'd be looking for him. Which building is that?"

"It's, uh…Hope Street," Riley replied. "Just down from Bank of America Plaza."

Matty got on the phone and Jack heard her call in a team to surround the building.

"Don't go in guns blazing," he cautioned. "We need to be careful about this."

Matty gave him a look. "I'm not new, Dalton."

"We don't know what they've done to him, either, so I'll need to—"

" _You're_ not going in," Matty snapped.

Jack moved in, his posture unconsciously threatening. "You can't be serious."

"You have a severe head injury, Jack," Matty reminded him. "I'm not risking your life when there are other agents who can go in and rescue MacGyver."

"Matty—"

"No," Matty replied, clipped and urgent. "I don't want to hear another word on the subject, or I'll put you in restraints until we get him back."

She turned back to her phone, her back to him, and Jack heard her ask for Charlie Robinson, Mac's bomb tech friend. He was slightly mollified that she was taking every precaution, even the possibility that the parts of the bomb that Heinrich had already amassed might be assembled, but the fact that he was being sidelined twisted something inside of him. He linked his fingers behind his head and turned his back to the screens, his eyes on nothing but memories.

It was hell, waiting.

The teams were good—quick and quiet, no sirens or local LEOs involved. Nothing that might spook Heinrich's men into acting rashly before Heinrich himself arrived to take command. In fact, the more Jack listened to the sit reps being called in, the more he felt his muscles begin to relax.

Until he heard Charlie's voice.

" _Phoenix, this is Robinson, over."_

"Charlie, it's Matty."

Jack turned around, dropping his hands to his sides, his eyes on the security camera pointed to the building. Riley had turned on the infrared and was instructing one of the teams to hang a parabolic microphone on the building across the street, aiming the sensor at the floor where they saw the flag in the window.

Jack realized that he was seeing into the building as Riley worked her magic. There were red blobs scattered throughout, two or three on each floor, the most concentrated on the seventh, and down in the basement.

" _Matty, we've got a problem here,"_ Charlie reported. _"We're at the basement level of the Hope building, ready to head up."_

"What's the problem?" Matty asked.

" _The building is wired,"_ Charlie reported. _"There's enough C4 on the metal supports and girders down here to take down this building and the rest of the block with it."_

Matty and Jack exchanged a terrified, confused glance.

"Can you disarm it?"

" _That's just it,"_ Charlie reported. _"It's not armed. It's not even rigged to a firing mechanism that I can see."_

Something began playing in the back of Jack's mind. A memory….

He grabbed the phone from Matty. "Charlie, it's Jack, you copy?"

" _Copy."_

"Something Mac said back when The Ghost turned his house into a bomb, you remember that?"

" _Not something I'm likely to forget anytime soon."_

Jack nodded. "He said the guy's M.O. was to conceal one device with another."

" _You think this is The Ghost?"_

Jack shook his head. "No…but I think we aren't looking at the full picture here. If the C4 isn't attached to a trigger there…could it be in one of the other buildings?"

" _Shit,"_ Charlie muttered.

"But which building?" Riley lamented. "This is one of the biggest cities in the country."

"No, wait. Jack's right," Matty said, turning slowly to face the screen. "We aren't looking at the full picture."

The team waited, watching as she filtered through the pictures collected thus far on the case.

"Heinrich doesn't know Mac—he's not even in the country yet," Matty said, reminding them that they had teams watching every major flight into the country from Germany. "But… _Devereaux_ does."

"So…?" Bozer replied, not tracking.

"Heinrich didn't take Mac," Jack concluded. "Devereaux did. And if I were a bettin' man, I'd say Frenchie's looking to use our boy to double-cross his boss."

" _More than double-cross, by the looks of this stuff,"_ Charlie replied. _"He wants to take him down, permanently."_

"Charlie," Matty took the phone back from Jack, "can you get a crew over to check out the other three buildings Heinrich owns—see if their basements are set up the same?"

" _Roger that,"_ Charlie replied. _"What about Mac?"_

Matty looked over at Jack. "It's time for Plan B."

"Hell yeah, it is," Jack muttered, starting for the door.

"Dalton," Matty barked.

Jack turned, practically vibrating with the need to get downtown and get Mac out of that building. His headache had taken a back seat to his need to be in action, to be moving toward a solution.

"You're going to listen to me," she informed him, "and you're going to do exactly what I'm telling you, or the consequences will be…unpleasant."

Jack took a slow breath, curling his hands into fists. His jaw was clenched so tight, he thought he felt a tooth crack.

"You and Riley will set up overwatch directly across from the Hope building," Matty told him. "You will use her infrared camera patch and the parabolic mic to locate MacGyver. Once you secure his exact position, you will inform the strike team. They will go in and take out Devereaux— _only after_ ," she lifted a hand, raising her voice over any protest from Jack, "Charlie has confirmed that we've diffused any possibility of multiple casualties from buildings blowing up in downtown Los Angeles."

Jack waited a beat. "You finished?"

"I am if you understand that I do not want you breaking into that building and risking further damage to yourself to get Mac out," Matty replied, her tone brittle. "You can be there for him afterwards. Do you understand me?"

Jack swallowed. "Matty," he took a slow breath. "I respect the hell out of you, you know that. And I respect the chain of command. I know that Oversight couldn't have known this was going to happen when we were sent us into this mess." He didn't miss Matty's eyes dart once more to the side when he mentioned Oversight. "But that kid is _my_ responsibility. Keeping him safe is _my_ job. I let him get taken right under my nose, and I'm getting him back."

"Jack—"

"I'll set up overwatch," he told her. "And I'll let the teams do their job, but you gotta know, if there's a chance to get our boy outta there, I'm taking it."

Matty didn't reply. After letting her gaze linger on Jack a few beats more, she lifted her chin, then turned back to the screens. Jack took that as his being dismissed and signaled Riley to follow him to the tactical room. She packed her laptop gear into a backpack, then took the bulletproof vest he handed her.

"You were kinda harsh on Matty back there," she pointed out as Jack fastened his TAC vest over his own Kevlar. "She's just worried about you. And I mean, it's not like she doesn't know how important Mac is to you."

"Ri, that's like saying people who visit the zoo know how the tiger actually lives." He slipped extra clips into his vest. "I love everyone on this team, you know that." He looked at her. "But none of you realize what losing that kid would do to me. It would end me."

"We all care about Mac—"

Jack stepped forward, the look on his face silencing her protest. " _End_ me."

Riley swallowed, nodding shakily. "Okay, Jack."

"Let's go."


	3. Chapter 3

**7** **th** **floor of the Hope Street building**

 **Mid-day**

 _ **Mac**_

"…understand my vision."

The voice sounded as though it was coming at him from underwater.

"I am as clear as I can be, really—"

"Think he's coming around, Boss."

Mac turned his head, a groan slipping out before he could stop it. He couldn't open his left eye; blood from a cut above his eyebrow had slipped down and sealed his lashes shut. His left cheek throbbed and as he instinctively worked his jaw, he realized the skin on the inside of his mouth had been shredded against his teeth.

"It's about time," Frank sighed dramatically. "Does me no good to share things with you if you're not conscious to hear them."

"Maybe you should stop hitting me, then," Mac muttered, rolling to his side and spitting blood from his mouth. He hated that goddamn ring. It was like being hit with brass knuckles.

"You make a good point," Frank conceded.

Mac probably should have seen the kick to his midsection coming after that comment; he gasped as the pain radiated outward, his ribs creaking as he curled around his throbbing abdomen.

"Not…exactly what I…had in mind," he groaned.

Frank chuckled. "No, I imagine not," he conceded, moving away as Mac caught his breath.

Pushing up to his elbow, Mac looked around him, trying to pry his left eye open, the blood and swelling preventing him. He was still in the same room—the desk in the center, the plastic-covered windows. It looked to be about mid-day by the light pouring through the glass wall, so he hadn't been unconscious long. Frank had removed his suit jacket and was rolling up his sleeves as he continued his circuitous route around the room.

A cold pit grew in Mac's gut.

"Now, where was I?" Frank asked, rhetorically.

"Your vision," Mac mocked, curling his legs under him and sitting up. He dabbed the back of his hand to his split lip.

"Exactly!" Frank whirled around and pointed at Mac. "You see…people paint the world full of shadows and tell their children to stay in the light because the darkness is full of monsters," he splayed his hands wide.

Theatrics. Fantastic. Mac exhaled carefully.

"But you and I know that's not true," Frank turned his hand flat as though to indicate Mac was in this with him. "We know that in the darkness, there are _possibilities_."

"What the hell are you talking about, man?" Mac muttered, reaching up to cup his sore jaw. "Only monster I see around here is you."

"I'm trying to make you see that we're _all_ monsters, MacGyver," Frank moved closer to where Mac sat slumped over. "And by helping me achieve my vision, you will setting yourself free."

If his face hadn't been so bruised, Mac would have rolled his eyes at that. "I told you already," he said, his tongue dabbing at his cut lip. "I'm not helping you. No matter how much…rhetoric you try to shove down my throat."

Frank tilted his head. "We are emotional beings, MacGyver. Rhetoric is the fuel that feeds the fire."

Mac simply blinked at him. Well, winked, really. His face had started to throb. He had a feeling that he'd lost the plot of this one somewhere along the way—if there had been an actual plot other than _kill them all_.

"Still, I _do_ need your cooperation," Frank conceded, nodding at the guard named Marco. "And since you clearly don't have enough self-preservation to act appropriately when you're being mashed into a bloody pulp, let's change it up a bit."

Mac tracked Frank's hands, watching as Marco pulled another metal chair—like the one he'd been tied to initially—into the room, situating it near the juncture of the glass wall and the plastic-covered opening. Mac frowned.

He had a very bad feeling about this.

"Have you ever wondered what it feels like to drown, MacGyver?"

Mac was on his feet before he registered moving. Adrenalin was an amazing thing—fueled by an innate need to escape, to survive, Mac's body muffled the pain from being beaten as he launched himself toward the hallway in hopes of reaching the stairwell. He didn't make it four steps before two of the guards caught him, one lifting him off the ground like he was a recalcitrant child, and shoved him onto the metal chair.

He bucked and fought, but was quickly overpowered. His wrists were cuffed to the lower rungs of the chair, his ankles to the chair legs. In minutes he was completely immobile.

"I've heard it's really quite painful," Frank continued as if nothing had happened.

Mac bit his bottom lip to keep silent, breath hammering through his nose as he felt panic begin to overtake him. Frank's image slipped away to be replaced by El Noche's swarthy countenance and thick mustache.

" _It will poison you slowly…. I'm told it feels like drowning…."_

Marco grabbed his hair again, yanking his head back.

Mac couldn't help it. He broke. "No, no no no, wait, just…just hold up a minute—"

"No, don't think I will hold up a minute," Frank replied, nodding as another guard stretched a thin towel across Mac's face. "I want to see what this does to you."

Knowing what was coming—he'd received the training, same as any other agent—Mac held his breath. He'd tried the same when El Noche tried to use nitrogen in a similar manner; he was hoping Frank wasn't as observant as the Mexican drug lord.

The fist to his stomach dashed those hopes and he involuntarily gasped as icy water poured over his face, filling his nose, his mouth, splashing over his head to soak his hair. He couldn't even choke. The water slid down his throat, overwhelmed his nose, spilling into his lungs, and filled him up with fire and ice.

And then as quickly as it started, it was over.

Marco released his hair and his head came up in a desperate bid for air. He gagged, choking up water, his muscles convulsing as his lungs fought to do their job and rid themselves of anything but air. He couldn't see, he could barely breathe, everything… _everything_ hurt.

All he could do was hang his head and drag air in through his gaping mouth.

* * *

 _ **Jack**_

Matty had paved the way for Jack and Riley to set up the overwatch nest on the seventh floor of the building directly across from the Hope Street building. The room where they set up appeared to be someone's corner office, but minutes after arriving, Jack had rearranged the furniture so that his rifle was in position, the scope pointed toward the window with the upside-down American flag.

Jack stretched out prone on the cleared-off desk, the rifle butt at his shoulder, one arm crossed over the other as a brace, his eye on the scope.

"You good, Ri?"

"Yep," Riley replied. "I can see infrared, and you should be hearing what's going on in about two—"

" _Only monster I see around here is you."_

"—seconds," Riley finished, wincing as she adjusted the volume, Mac's voice filling both their heads. "Okay, we got ears inside that room."

Jack shifted on the desk, trying to get the scope positioned correctly. He twisted the sight; it was clear and accurate at two thousand yards. The two buildings were only about 500 feet apart. He figured he should be able to see the color of Mac's eyes, as soon as he found him.

"What do you have on infrared?"

"I see…seven heat signatures," Riley reported. "One on the floor, the rest positioned in various—"

"I got 'im," Jack reported the moment his scope found Mac. "Damn, kid," he breathed. "You're a mess."

"He's hurt?"

"They've been beating on him, that much is for sure," Jack replied. "Probably because he won't do what they want."

" _Have you ever wondered what it feels like to drown, MacGyver?"_

"Oh, you son of a bitch," Jack growled as a chill went down his spine at those words. "Matty, you copy?"

" _I'm here, Jack,"_ came Matty's reply.

"You need to get the team in there," Jack demanded, watching as Mac made a break for it, but was caught and dropped onto a chair. "They're going to waterboard him."

"What?" Riley gasped, stepping forward as if she could do something to prevent it from here.

" _No, no no no, wait, just…just hold up a minute—"_

The panic and terror in Mac's voice ripped through Jack's chest and he barked into his comms. "Matty!"

" _Charlie hasn't secured the other three buildings yet, Jack,"_ Matty replied, regret rippling through her voice. _"I'm sorry."_

"Son of a _bitch!"_

Jack gripped the rifle tighter as he helplessly watched Mac's head being yanked back by his hair, and a pitcher of water was poured directly on his young partner's towel-covered face.

* * *

 _ **Mac**_

"I really don't want to have to do this again, MacGyver," Frank said, crouching down so that he was eye-level with Mac's half-lidded eyes. "All you have to do is agree to work with me, and this will all be over."

Mac spat water from his lips in Frank's general direction. "Hey…," he rasped, lifting his head a bit. "I can see now," he blinked, the blood sealing his swollen eye shut having been washed away. "Thanks."

Marco grabbed his hair again, his fingers tangling painfully in the wet strands and jerked his head back. The towel returned, and this time instead of holding his breath, Mac breathed out forcefully so that his lungs were empty when the water splashed once more over his face. It felt like fire licking through his ribcage, wrapping around his heart and turning his lungs to ash, but at least it kept the water from filling him up.

This time when Mac was allowed to sit forward he didn't gag up water, he merely dragged in air in great gulps. He could tell immediately that he'd pissed Frank off by not actively drowning. The man charged forward, slapping him, hard. Mac's head snapped to the side and he let it hang there, spitting water and blood on the floor.

"Your resistance is ridiculous!" Frank shouted, losing his temper for the first time since all of this started. "I will win, and you will help me. Fighting me now only delays the inevitable."

Mac did roll his eyes at that.

"No one is going to rescue you, MacGyver," Frank said, his voice lower, more controlled, "if that's what you're waiting for. Your friends at the think tank believe you've betrayed them. Your old Army buddies think you're dead. There is no one here for you but me. I am your whole world now."

Mac knew Frank was lying. No question. Jack was looking for him. He could feel it. But he let his shoulders sag at those words, his head lolling so that his chin rested on his chest in what could be seen as defeat.

"So," Frank exhaled, his eyes once more a dead calm as he regarded Mac.

Mac lifted his head slowly, his wet hair hanging over his eyes but not impeding his vision. He waited as Frank settled back into his imperious dictator persona.

"When _I_ say jump…what do _you_ say, MacGyver?"

Mac lifted the corner of his wounded mouth. "You first."

Frank actually growled, baring his teeth. "AGAIN!" he screamed, reaching for something on Marco's vest.

It took Mac only seconds to realize that not only had he succeeded in pushing Frank over the edge, but that the man was going to drag him along for the fall. Marco pulled Mac's head back, the towel returned, but before the water could be poured over Mac's face, he felt the white-hot burn of the stun baton against his wet abs.

Mac screamed.

The pain was overwhelming. It ripped through him without remorse.

The electrical current shredded his control; he couldn't think of anything except how much it burned, his muscles bucking and cramping until his back bowed, his head snapping backwards even without Marco's hand in his hair. This time the water choked him like before, filling his scream-seared lungs and spilling over his mouth and throat.

His mind skipped, seeking darkness, escape. He felt heat from the bomb blast that had killed Pena rush over him, slamming him back against the Humvee. He felt the suffocating helplessness as Zoe's last terrified, freezing gasps as the icy water closed over her head. He slid through every wound that had almost ended him, every moment the edge of death was within view.

And then suddenly he was empty. Hollow.

Pain was nothing. Darkness was nothing. He was simply floating, drifting.

Gone.

* * *

 _ **Jack**_

Mac's scream shattered something in Jack's mind. He'd heard his partner sound like that before—when he'd been wounded and burning up with fever and out of his mind from pain—but that had been because Jack was trying to _save_ him.

This…this was a new kind of pain. It was torture, pure and simple and Jack was simply watching it happen.

"Matty!" Jack shouted into the comm as he watched Mac's back arch in pain. "Get him outta there!"

Matty didn't reply and Jack held his breath when he saw one man remove the baton and someone else pour water over the towel across Mac's face. Spots danced at the corners of his vision before they stopped with the water and at that point, Mac had ceased to struggle.

"No," Jack whispered, registering Riley's hand on his ankle.

"Jack, Mac's heat signature is fading," she reported, her voice urgent, scared. "It's going from red to yellow!"

"No, no no, you don't do this, kid," Jack muttered, his eye pressed so hard against the gun sight he felt like he was bruising his skin. "C'mon, Mac, don't do this. _Please_."

He watched as the towel was removed, Mac's head hanging back over the chair, his body completely limp, his skin pale. Jack couldn't see if Mac's chest was moving with breath. He watched one of the guards—the one who'd held Mac's hair back—press his fingers against Mac's throat. The man in the suit began screaming expletives and shouting orders and in seconds, the handcuffs that had held Mac secure to the chair were removed and his partner was hauled out of the chair and stretched out on the ground.

" _Bring him back or you're next!"_ The suit screamed at the men, then stormed out of frame.

Jack kept the scope centered on Mac, watching as the guards worked on Mac's chest, pumping the water from his lungs, breathing into his mouth. Jack felt his hands tremble, his heart stuttering in his chest. He'd done this once before to Mac—in the center of a run-down amusement park, with the kid half-starved and burning up from infection.

But watching it was a whole new level of panic. He heard himself whispering pleas to whomever was listening that Mac _breathe_ , _just one breath, c'mon kid you can do it, just take one easy breath with me_ —

The sudden rasping drag of air followed by retching of water and helpless coughs that sounded over their mics had Jack going weak and Riley's grip on his ankle easing. He could see through the scope where one of the guards rolled Mac to his side almost gently, waiting until Mac's breath had started to even out before looking at the other guard who'd helped revive their prisoner.

" _He's gonna kill him, you know that, right?"_

" _You say that like it should matter to me, Marco."_

Jack snarled at the other man's response.

" _He can't help build some magic bomb if he's dead, dumbass,"_ Marco replied.

Jack watched as Marco looked down at Mac, rolling the kid to his back.

" _Jack…,"_ Mac's voice rasped out, calling for his partner in a semi-conscious plea for rescue.

Jack didn't even care that his sobbed response was audible to his team. He _needed_ to be over there. Now.

" _Jack ain't gonna help you, kid,"_ Marco said. _"You best just give in and let Frank have his way."_

"Don't listen to him, Mac," Jack growled. "I'm getting you out of there."

Mac's head lolled; he wasn't even close to coherent. _"Jack…."_

" _What do we do with him?"_

Marco sighed. _"Let's put him back in that room,"_ he said, hauling Mac to a slumped seated position before hefting the kid's slim frame over his shoulder and standing. _"Give him some food and a blanket. Maybe by the time Heinrich gets in, he'll have come to his senses."_

" _Don't bet on it."_

Jack pushed himself up from the gun sight, his hand pressed to his comm. "Matty?" he tried one last time, his voice breaking. He didn't want to overtly disobey her, but after that—

" _I heard,"_ Matty replied, a new tone in her voice, something sharp and strong, like she was done playing whatever game she'd been forced to play. _"Do what you have to do, Jack."_

Relief made him weak as he slid off the top of the desk. "Riley?"

"Looks like there's a room a few feet down from where they were," she replied, turning her laptop so that he could see the screen.

He watched as one of the red images was dropped to the floor and the others moved away, some going to the upper level, some to the lower.

"He's red again," Jack commented. "That's good, right?"

Riley nodded. "At least means his heat signature is registering normal anyway."

Jack turned to remove his scope from his rifle, a wave of dizziness washing over him, making him sway. He grabbed the desk for balance.

"Jack?"

"'m okay," Jack breathed. "Just…," he put a hand to his head. "I gotta get him out of there."

"Maybe the teams—"

"Matty's doing what she needs to do," Jack straightened up. "And she's right: we need to make sure rescuing Mac doesn't get a whole lot of others killed. Listen…," he looked directly at Riley. "I'm _one guy_. One guy can make it in and out without triggering the apocalypse a helluva lot easier than some SWAT team."

Riley looked down at her computer. "And your head?"

"My head's fine," Jack snapped. "I've had a lot worse than this."

"Doesn't make me feel a whole lot better, Jack," Riley muttered, her eyes on the unmoving red image on the monitor. "But after what we just saw…heard, I—I don't blame you."

"Good," Jack nodded, grabbing his rifle.

"Wait," Riley held up a finger, then dug into her backpack. After a moment, she pulled out a piece of head gear and handed it to Jack. "Wear this."

Jack shot her a puzzled look.

"Bozer and I put it together," she told him. "This links you in to the parabolic mic and this," she pointed to a small flip-down section that looked like half a set of glasses, "links you into the infrared. All you have to do is tell me what floor."

"You can hear me, too?"

"See and hear you," Riley nodded. "Well, see what you see, anyway."

Jack grinned, taking the headgear. It was lightweight and luckily didn't press against the wound on his temple. "This is some serious Q-type shit right here."

"That's kind of what Bozer said, too," Riley smiled. "It's his design," she admitted. "I just added the tech."

Jack felt emotion press against the base of his throat. He reached for the woman he'd come to see as his surrogate daughter and pulled her into a tight hug.

"Thanks, Ri," he said against her hair.

Her arms tightened around him. "I put Advil in your TAC vest, too," she said against his shoulder.

Chuckling softly, he released her, then dragged a hand down his face. "Tell Matty I'll make it up to her."

"You're telling her that yourself," Riley replied. "Just…go get him back."

"Roger that."

He was down the elevator and across the street before Riley had time to work up a plausible excuse for losing track of their soldier.

* * *

 **The Hope Street Building  
7** **th** **floor**

 _ **Mac**_

Consciousness returned to Mac in levels of pain rather than awareness.

There was the post-fight, bone-deep ache would be sticking around for a while. Then the sharp, breath-stealing agony centralized on his midsection, and finally a throb across his chest that shot through him hard enough he felt his body shudder in response.

 _That_ pain brought Mac around like a swift punch.

He opened his eyes, his blurred vision taking in cement walls, a torn and tangled sheet of plastic, and the remains of a metal chair scattered around the room like bones at a prehistoric dig site. The ache in his head shimmied down through his jaw and he felt a helpless groan in reaction sit at the back of his throat.

Rolling carefully to his back, he blinked at the ceiling, his body a special brand of tired. The kind that made everything else seem unimportant. He wanted nothing more than to sink into the ground and sleep.

The moment he closed his eyes, his memory assaulted him with images. Frank's shark grin, a red signet ring, the blankness of a wet towel. He was instantly claustrophobic, his breath hammering roughly through his clenched teeth, panic wrapping around him, turning the world on its side. Nausea built and boiled up through his throat and it was all he could do not to choke.

"Fuck," he groaned, rolling once more to his side, managing to leverage himself up onto one elbow just before his system rebelled and more water came up, splattering the floor beneath him. He retched a few more times, gasping as his muscles finally seemed to settle.

Groaning once more, Mac pulled his legs in close and leveraged himself away from the puddle of rancid water, resting his back against the wall next to the torn open plastic window. The wind from the warm Los Angeles afternoon stirred his wet hair, making him shiver involuntarily.

 _What the hell happened to me?_

He shoved shaking fingers through his hair, pushing the wet strands away from his face. He felt like shit. His muscles cramped and spasmed at irregular intervals, the skin along his belly burned, and he couldn't seem to keep his thoughts aligned long enough to follow a path to some kind of solution.

The only thought that lingered longer than ten seconds caused emotion to well behind his eyes, his throat closing in retaliation: _where was Jack_?

He closed his eyes again, trying to steady his breathing, trying to focus, but nothing settled. He saw images of Jack, his partner's face pale and bleeding. He remembered lifting the man over his shoulder, the crushing weight of his limp body. Then it was a shark's smile, a fist flying toward his face, and that damn towel again and Mac was gasping, hands splayed against the ground for balance, eyes open and searching for something real.

Without warning, the door to his right buzzed and opened, making him jolt. A man shouldered his way in, glancing with surprise at Mac.

"Hell, kid," he huffed, setting down a white paper bag and tossing a blanket on the floor next to it. "You're a lot tougher than you look."

He knew this guy…who was he? Something…like…Matt or Mark or-

"After what we just did to you, I didn't expect you to be conscious for hours."

 _Marco_. That was it. Marco with the stun baton and big fists.

Mac swallowed, his arms jerking up to cross over his chest in a shaking, stuttered motion. He might not be able to clearly remember what happened, but based on the aches stretching through his muscles, it wasn't anything he wanted to repeat anytime soon.

"What's that?" he croaked, wincing. His voice was rough and raw, as though he'd been screaming for hours.

"Food," Marco kicked at the bag. "And after getting that much water dumped on you, I figured you'd be cold."

"Why…," Mac coughed, his lungs rattling loosely in his chest. "Why're you helping me?"

Marco shook his head. "I ain't, kid. I'm helping me. Sooner you agree to work with Frank, the sooner all this mess is done and I can go home."

He closed the door with a click and Mac was left alone once more. Pulling his knees close to his chest, he rested his elbows on his knees and shoved his hands into his wet hair.

" _Think_ , Mac," he admonished himself.

That had always been his strength, thinking. Finding the solution, no matter the problem. What was it his dad had said? _With the right parts, you can make anything_. And he'd always been so great at finding the parts.

Except right now…things just weren't connecting. And it was starting to scare him.

His chest clenched painfully once more and he eased his legs down, lifting his wet Henley up to look at the skin along his belly. There were two bruised marks with what looked like fading puncture holes off to one side, with a third centered below his belly button that looked raw and recent.

"Stun baton," he exhaled, thinking of Marco.

Facts…he was good with facts. They were real. Tangible. He could build something from facts.

So…what did he know about the effects of a stun baton? It was like a power surge, overwhelming the nervous system, causing the muscles to lock up. Based on how sore he felt, he could definitely put a check in that column.

Tipping his head back, he tried to calm his breathing, wincing as he felt something on the back of his neck rub against the collar of his shirt. He reached up and felt another tender area the same size as the three on his abs. Four hits.

That much current going through his system would easily scramble the electrical signals in his brain. His regular neurological impulses would be significantly compromised.

Though, the fact that he could think words like _neurological impulses_ gave him some hope that he was coming back online, as it were. He rotated to his hip and crawled slowly over to where Marco had dropped the blanket and food. His arms shook; he felt like he'd run three marathons back to back.

He coughed again, the rattle in his lungs telling him what that image of the blank towel he kept remembering meant, and why he was soaking wet. He'd never been truly waterboarded before—not counting El Noche's attempt. Jack had told him about what he'd gone through in the CIA, and he'd read reports, but…none of that compared to actually surviving the act.

Grabbing the blanket first, he wrapped it around his shoulders, and half-heartedly rubbed at his wet hair. It wasn't cold, really. But the wind blowing through the torn plastic was chilling him through his wet clothes, and he knew that his body lost more heat through his wet hair than anything else.

"Facts," he muttered to himself, keeping the blanket over his head. "Like a Jedi cloak," he mused, feeling his mouth pull up in a rueful grin.

Jack would have called it a Jedi cloak, anyway. Jack would also tease him about not being able to string a series of thoughts together, but that was a different story.

He dug into the food bag. He knew the exhaustion he felt was partly from the fact that his blood sugar had been flash-fried into lactic acid with the baton hits. He hoped for some kind of—well, how about that. Fruit. Maybe Marco had a heart after all.

Mac devoured the banana and its friend, the peanut butter sandwich, sucking down the can of Coke like it was going out of style. He was just glad it wasn't water.

The food settled him a bit, and he started to reassemble the puzzle pieces in his head to form a more complete picture. A man he'd trusted, a man he'd _saved_ , had betrayed him. It wasn't like Frank Devereaux had been a friend, but…Mac felt an attachment to him. There had been something compelling him to go out on a limb and not only get him out of physical danger, but back to his family.

He'd been so focused on that reunion, wanting Frank to have that time just with his wife and son, he'd not even followed up. He hadn't been there to see them reconnected, happy and relieved that Frank was safe.

And it turned out to all be a lie.

For a long moment he sat still, trying not to shiver, and wondered where else in his life he'd been blindly trusting and was walking into another trap. A trap like Nikki. Like Thornton. He already knew Matty was lying to him about knowing his dad, but…she protected them all so fiercely, he couldn't see her plotting to betray him.

She wouldn't do that to him…would she?

Was he _that_ easy to manipulate? Give him some randomized parts, an unsolvable problem, and he was distracted enough to look away from all the lies and deceit surrounding him? Who the hell was he if he couldn't find solid ground in his own team?

His hand moved to his chest where his dog tags had rested for so long. Two bits of metal identifying everything about him. And nothing about him.

Two bits of metal that connected him to the one person who had been constant. _Jack_.

That man was nothing _but_ solid ground. Jack hadn't known about Frank. And if he was in one piece, Mac knew there was nothing keeping him from finding where Mac was and getting him the hell out of there. He'd found Mac in the middle of the Mexican wilderness. He'd stayed by his side in an avalanche in Canada. He'd broken into a military-grade clean room with a live bomb just to save Mac's life.

Jack would find him. Mac just had to defy Frank a bit longer.

First, however, there were some other pressing matters to take care of. He pushed shakily to his feet, keeping the blanket around his shoulders, but letting it slide from his head. He started for the door, one hand going out to the wall in a desperate bid for balance as the world seemed to drop out from under him. It took him a solid minute to settle his vision.

Taking a breath, he pounded on the door.

"Hey! Marco!"

Silence.

"Listen, the food was great and all," he coughed slightly, clearing his throat, "but unless you want it to get messy in here, you're gonna need to let me out."

More silence. Mac pounded again. "Marco! C'mon, man!"

The door beeped and he stepped back when it clicked open.

"You gonna behave, or do I need to use these?"

Marco held up the cuffs that had immobilized him earlier. Mac swallowed, his body shuddering involuntarily at the memory of being restrained. He held up one hand, the other still clutching the blanket around him.

"I'll be good."

Marco nodded and stepped back so that Mac could exit the small room. He saw two other men guarding the hallway and made his way toward the opened stairway, the scaffolding to his left. A door was opened at the end of the hall and he could see a sink and a urinal. He stepped inside, glancing over his shoulder as Marco stepped in behind him.

"I've been doing this on my own for a long time, man," Mac commented. He looked around. No windows. He looked back. "I mean, unless you're dying to help…."

Marco glared at him, then stepped back and closed the door. Mac exhaled, relaxing slightly. He went straight to the urinal first to take care of business, then turned toward the sink to try to wash up. The sight of his own reflection was enough to give him a start. The left side of his face was bruised from temple to jaw, his cheekbone cut and swollen, the white of his eye blood-red with burst vessels. There was a cut along his hairline that had matted and crusted blood along the side of his head, turning his blonde hair to rust. His lip was split in two places, puffed out so that he looked like a pouting twelve-year-old.

"Holy shit," he muttered, letting the blanket slide from his shoulders and fall to the floor.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd looked this bad. Jack was usually the one taking the hits, calling the attention his way so that Mac could figure out a way free from whatever predicament they were in. No wonder the guy was always joking around about taking a hit. Who'd want to call attention to how much this hurt?

"Let's go, hot-shot," Marco bellowed from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, yeah," Mac muttered, turning on the water and splashing some in his face, intending to wash the blood away.

The minute the water touched his skin, he once more saw the blank towel behind his closed eyes. He gasped, staggering backwards, his unsteady motion sending him careening against the stall door directly behind him. He blinked, trying to grab onto something for balance and suddenly all he could see were Zoe's wide, scared eyes, his gasps matching hers as the water rose. He heard her voice shake, felt the same suffocating desperation as he watched her drown.

He was on his knees, his head hanging down, his hands pressed flat to the tiled floor, when the door opened, crashing loudly against the far wall. Someone turned off the water in the sink, then grabbed him roughly under the arms, hauling him to his feet.

"Let's move."

It was Marco, he realized, mostly by the bruising grip on his arm. They were moving down the open hallway toward the room with the desk, but he couldn't seem to clear his vision, vivid memories creating an overlay of confusion.

 _Murdoc's dark eyes staring him down as a gun barrel flashed._

 _Jack's blood on his hands as he bled out from a leg wound._

 _Nikki's intensity as she sat across from him, promising she wasn't a traitor, that she hadn't tried to get him killed._

 _Bozer pin wheeling, nearly falling over the edge of a building._

He couldn't stop the memories from crashing against each other, splashing facts that didn't match onto details that didn't matter. He blinked, shook his head, reached up to rub his eyes but it was as though his mind was hotwiring itself, searching for any memory other than being waterboarded. It made him stumble, Marco yanking on his arm to get him to walk in a straight line.

Voices echoed from the room ahead of them and Mac fought to pull himself together. Marco hauled him into the room and toward the desk at the center. Mac turned his head away from where the metal chair was still sitting, the floor around it wet.

"Ah, Marco, at last," greeted Frank, as though he were hosting a cocktail party and hadn't just tortured someone almost to death. "We've been waiting to greet our guest, haven't we, Nicolas?"

Mac jerked to a halt.

Marco tugged on Mac's arm, but he couldn't— _wouldn't_ —move closer. Standing next to Frank was a boy of about six years, dark hair, olive skin, large brown eyes. He stared at Mac with open curiosity, his gaze going directly to the bruises on Mac's face.

But Mac wasn't seeing _this_ little boy. He was seeing an entirely different boy, riddled with bullets until his face wasn't a face anymore.

He was back in Argentina, trapped in the Embassy office with the Ambassador's son and wife. He was sweating from the oppressive heat, his hands steady and sure as he worked to dismantle the bomb planted with intent to eliminate an entire family.

" _Don't you move, Andrew, you stay right there with your Mom!"_

He was flinching, ducking from gunfire tearing through the walls. He was staring in horror as a bullet found its mark, punching through the chest of the Ambassador's wife. His hands were trapped, holding wires in the bomb apart as the Ambassador's son screamed in devastation before grabbing a discarded handgun and running for the door.

" _Andrew! Come back! Don't go out there!"_

And then an arm was wrapping around his waist, picking him up and carrying him away from the room and the bomb and the boy and all he felt was heat—washing over him, shuddering through him. And he could see the boy's body, bullet holes replacing his face. And the heat pressed down and climbed into his lungs and he couldn't breathe…he couldn't _breathe_ …he _couldn't breathe_ ….

"…the hell is wrong with him?"

"Some kind of panic attack, Boss."

Voices started to filter back into Mac's awareness. Frank. Marco.

"He's scaring Nicolas," Frank said with disgust. "Snap him out of it."

Mac felt his head crack to the side before he felt the slap. He blinked; sweat or tears, he couldn't tell for sure, tented his lashes. It took him a moment to register that he was on his knees, slumped sideways on the floor. He fought to control his rasping breath, trying to remember what Jack had done when this happened to him before.

 _One easy breath…. Breathe with me, kid…._

He took one slow, shaking breath, then another. He felt rather than saw Marco rearing back for another slap and stuck his hand up quickly, catching the man's wrist before it made contact.

"Stop. Hitting. Me." He growled through clenched teeth.

Using Marco's wrist as leverage, he pulled himself back to his feet. He was shaky, unsteady, but he held himself as still and straight as he could.

"Who is this man, Papa?" Nicolas asked, standing carefully away from his father, but keeping his large eyes on Mac.

"This is our good friend, MacGyver," Frank replied, tilting his head. "He's going to help your Papa with some very important work."

"The hell I—" Mac started, but then his eyes caught the glint of a gun barrel reflecting in the late afternoon sunlight. It was pointed directly at the back of Nicolas' head, specifically positioned so that Mac would see it, but the boy would not.

"You see…," Frank said, picking up where Mac's words choked off. "I realized that I'd been going about this all wrong. Your…tenacity, let's say, has shown me you have very different ideas on the merits of my vision." He started to move around the desk, leaning against it and facing Mac. "But…then I remembered how interested you were in my family." He smiled the shark's smile again, all teeth and anger. "So, I thought you might want to meet my son."

Mac's eyes shifted from the gun pointed at the back of Nicolas' head, to Frank.

"You're a bastard," he snarled.

"Actually, I know exactly who my father is," Frank replied, one eyebrow arched. "Now, _he_ was a bastard. But he taught me one very valuable lesson." He leaned forward, gathering Mac's damp Henley in his hands and said softly, "Know exactly how far you're willing to go to get the job done."

He released Mac's shirt, then patted him on the side of the neck in a brotherly fashion. "How about you, MacGyver?" He tilted his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "How far are _you_ willing to go?"

Mac took a slow breath. He could feel his body shaking from the inside out—shock or adrenaline, he wasn't sure which. He knew Jack was coming for him. But he also knew that fighting wasn't going to get him anywhere anymore.

And he could _not_ lose another kid. Not another one.

"You win," he said, his voice pitched low, saying the words he knew Frank was listening for. "I'll help you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Basement of the Hope Street Building**

 **Late Afternoon**

 _ **Jack**_

" _Jack, it's Charlie, you copy?"_

"Copy you, Charlie. Go ahead," Jack replied, his voice hushed as he slipped into the basement level of the Hope Street building.

" _We got teams at the other three Heinrich buildings,"_ Charlie reported. _"All of 'em wired same as the building Mac's in…none of them connected to a trigger."_

"What the hell?" Jack muttered, shifting his rifle to his other arm so that he could open the door to the stairwell. "Why bother puttying up the place with C4 if you're not going to…." A thought struck him. "Oh, shit."

It seemed to hit Matty at the same time.

" _Jack,"_ she broke in. _"Heinrich landed at Dulles five minutes ago. He'll have the formula on him."_

"Matty, the formula—"

" _It's the connection,"_ she agreed. _"Devereaux needs Mac to help him apply it somehow to link the four buildings together."_

"And bring down half of L.A.," Jack concluded, peeking around the edge of the stairwell before he continued to climb. "Charlie, any way you could take this guy's legs out without…y'know…letting him _know_ you're taking his legs out?"

" _Ninja mode, activated,"_ Charlie replied.

Jack chuckled. He got why Mac liked this guy.

" _These three buildings are empty,"_ Charlie continued. _"So all we have to worry about is Mac in the Hope building, affirmative?"_

"Yeah, uh…," Jack winced as he spoke. "About that."

Charlie sighed. _"We'll start disassembling the C4 in the Hope Street building."_

" _Jack,"_ Riley's voice broke into the comms. _"You've got two red blobs coming your way on the first floor."_

"Copy that, Riley," Jack replied. "I'm moving forward."

Jack's biggest concern as he worked his way onto the first floor was how these guys were communicating with each other. If one alerted the rest before he could take them both out, he was screwed. Tipping down the half-lens, he whispered into his comm, " _First floor,_ " and saw immediately the schematic from Riley's computer show up in his view.

The first hostile was taken out with a sleeper hold, the second with a well-aimed shot. He checked their bodies. No comms. Frowning, he continued forward, making his way up the stairwells as quickly as possible. He didn't encounter anyone else until the fourth floor. With Riley's warning, he was able to take out two, the third giving him a bit more trouble.

The larger man swung at him with a roundhouse punch that would have taken him out in seconds if he hadn't gotten his rifle up to block the hit. The man was well-trained, however, and used Jack's own momentum to twist the rifle strap around Jack's throat, pulling Jack up against him in a tight hold.

He was choking, pressure building up in his head as his air was cut off.

" _Jack!"_ Riley called.

Knowing she could see everything he could, hear everything happening with him, gave Jack a burst of energy. He managed to get part of his hand around the rifle strap and pulled, detaching it from the weapon. Instinct and training worked in tandem and he was twisting around to face the guard, his elbow coming up as he turned, catching the other man in the throat.

The struggle was brief, but intense. Jack smashed his hand against the other man's jaw, feeling it give under the force. The man pressed back, pinning Jack painfully against the metal scaffolding of the stairwell.

" _Up and over, Jack!"_

That was Matty. He startled at the sound of her voice, but it did the trick. With a low growl, he grabbed the other man's TAC vest and heaved, unbalancing the man and sending him over the edge of the stairwell with a cry that cut off the minute his body hit the landing, four floors below.

Jack gasped in breath, his head pounding, vision blurring. He leaned against the wall inside the stairwell to the fifth floor. It took until that moment for him to realize that he'd lost his rifle when the other guy went over the edge. It was down several floors. He groaned.

"I'm getting too old for this shit," he rasped.

" _You had it under control,"_ Matty replied, and he could hear the note of pride in her voice.

"Didn't know you were watching," Jack retorted, getting his breath back.

Matty huffed. _"I'm always watching, Dalton."_

Staggering slightly, Jack checked the bodies of the two men he'd taken out first. "No comms," he whispered. "This is like…reverse _Die Hard_."

" _Jack, are you listening to the parabolic?"_ Riley asked.

Jack turned the switch on the head gear, wincing as he heard rough, raspy breathing beat through the mic.

" _It's Mac,"_ Riley said unnecessarily.

"I know," Jack muttered. Panic attack. "He's in trouble."

He could hear the choking gasps echoing in his headset, his heart clenching with helplessness. _One easy breath, kid. C'mon, you can do this._ Without realizing it, Jack slowed his breathing, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall, concentrating on Mac.

" _Stop. Hitting. Me."_

Jack grinned. He always secretly liked when Mac gave the bad guys attitude. Even if it did end up with one of them taking a beating. It meant the kid was still in the fight; they hadn't broken him.

He switched the parabolic feed down and whispered to Riley, "Moving up to the fifth."

" _Copy that,"_ Riley replied.

"Tell Charlie the interior of this building is super unfinished," Jack continued, panting a bit as he took the stairs two at a time.

" _How do you mean?"_

"The stairwell is basically a big open space with a scaffolding in the center," he reported. "Almost like they intended it to be an elevator and started building stairs instead."

" _So, if a bomb were to go off in the basement…."_

"It would turn the whole thing into a giant chimney," Jack finished.

" _I see four more red blobs and then nothing until the seventh floor,"_ Riley told him.

"How many up there?"

" _Looks like…six, but one of those is Mac,"_ Riley replied.

Jack nodded, pausing to check his clip, then pressed against his comm. "Roger that."

No comms connected to each other warning of Jack's arrival made planning his approach a bit easier. However, the lack of his rifle changed his plan a bit. Rolling his steps, he sighted down the barrel of his Glock, taking out two of the men before anyone was alerted to his presence.

The other two were a bit more difficult and Jack was forced to take cover behind what appeared to be boxes of to-be-assembled office furniture, the cardboard wrapping taking a beating before he was able to remove the hostiles. He paused a moment, breathing, and recentered himself before making his way back to the stairwell leading to the seventh floor.

He could hear voices above him both on his headgear and live.

"No, look. That is way too unstable for what you're talking about," Mac was saying.

"My sources assured me—"

"Well," Mac sighed, a thin, frustrated sound. "Your sources are wrong. You're talking about triacetone triperoxide—basically the most dangerous liquid compound there is."

Jack frowned. What the hell was Mac doing? Was he _helping_ them?

"Honestly, if you're right about this formula, all you really need is acetone and hydrogen peroxide to trigger the C4," Mac continued. "It's connecting the triggers so that they go off at once that's going to be the tricky part."

Jack continued up the stairwell, practically holding his breath to keep his steps light. He switched off the parabolic mic feed as he could hear Mac well enough live, and flipped the infrared lens away from his eyes.

" _I can see what you see,"_ Riley assured him through the comms, eerily reading his mind. _"Be careful."_

"I acquired tannerite," the other man huffed. "Twelve bricks."

Jack frowned. That one he actually knew. It was used for target practice at the rifle range. Usually not dangerous…if used properly. And in much smaller quantities than twelve bricks.

"Where is it?" Mac asked.

"Directly above us," the man replied. "We'll use it to trigger—"

Jack heard Mac huff. "Don't know who you've been getting your information from, but that's not going to trigger anything. Most it'll do is light this building on fire."

Jack rounded the top of the stairwell into a hallway. He pulled his Sig Sauer from his thigh holster, holding it in his weaker left hand as accuracy didn't matter as much, and balanced his Glock in his right.

" _Two blobs directly ahead,"_ Riley said softly in his comm. _"The rest are in the larger room."_

"That is not what I was told. Are you sure?"

Jack heard someone moving around and something that sounded like paper unrolling.

"Frank," Mac sighed. "There is not enough time in the world explain to you in a way you'll understand why using tannerite as your trigger mechanism for your C4-rigged basement won't work. Just…trust me."

Jack started to move down the hall when he heard Matty on comms.

" _Jack, the other buildings have been cleared,"_ she informed him. _"Oversight has approved taking out the hostiles by any means necessary."_

"After I get Mac," Jack replied, his voice barely a breath of sound.

" _Heinrich slipped our net,"_ Matty continued. _"If he gets to that building before we grab him, Devereaux will have Mac and the formula."_

"Don't say it," Jack whispered, wincing as he heard slow footsteps moving in the hallway.

" _Jack, one red blob, heading your way,"_ Riley warned him, almost stepping on Matty's reply in the process.

" _Oversight has weighed the risks."_ Matty's tone was crisp. _"The only way Devereaux's plan is successful is with Mac."_

 _Oh, fuck that,_ Jack thought.

" _I know what you're thinking,"_ Matty revealed. _"And I agree."_

Jack waited a beat.

" _Take care of it, Jack,"_ Matty continued. _"I've got your back."_

 _I know you do,_ Jack wanted to say, but held still, watching as a shadow moved along the edge of the scaffolding toward him. He waited in the shadows until the man paused, looking down the stairwell, confused. The moment the man turned away, Jack swung the butt of his Glock hard, cracking it against the man's skull. He winced in sympathy as the man went down; he'd just put that man in a world of hurt.

Lifting both weapons, barrels at the ready, Jack advanced down the hallway.

" _Jack, I've checked out the schematics of the building,"_ Riley told him. _"There's another stairway at the far end of that open room, but it only leads up. Looks like some kind of roof access."_

He couldn't afford to acknowledge her. The second man was suddenly directly in front of him. He didn't have time to try for something silent like choke hold. He'd have to risk a shot. Just as he started to squeeze the trigger, the man turned, smacking Jack's arm sideways and sending his shot off-course.

Reacting instinctively, Jack slammed the man in the throat with the flat of his arm, then kicked him in the knee, sending him down. Stepping over him, Jack held his Glock in front of him as he entered the room.

He met Mac's eyes immediately, trying not to wince at the battered face of his partner. He heard Riley's small gasp over his comms, though, remembering that she could see everything he could.

"Jack…," Mac breathed. The kid's entire being changed with that word. It was as if he was at once given a reprieve and a shot of adrenaline; Jack could almost hear the gears shift in his revving engine of a mind.

"Time to go, bud," Jack said, his Sig in his left hand, aimed at one of the guards in black tactical gear, his Glock pointed at the man in the suit, who he was fairly certain was Frank Devereaux.

"I'm afraid you're mistaken," Devereaux informed him, tugging his sleeves down to cover his wrists.

Jack gave him a humorless half-grin. "Yeah, you should be afraid."

The guard he'd tried to take out in the hallway worked around the edge of the room, eyeing Jack like a cornered boxer. Jack kept him in his periphery without removing his aim from Devereaux. When the man took a halting step forward and Jack squeezed the trigger of his Sig, the man falling to the ground, clutching his leg and screaming in pain. He hadn't actually been aiming for the leg, but…he'd take it.

Mac took a step back from the desk, his eyes darting to the side. Jack kept his Glock on Devereaux, trying to figure out why the kid wasn't moving toward him.

"You're going to be sorry you did that," Devereaux said, his words clipping off at the edges as though he were cutting them from his lips.

"I've been sorry since Berlin," Jack growled, offering another half-grin when Devereaux brought his chin up. "Yeah, I know about Berlin. Your magic formula. Hate to tell you, _pal_ , but we got your boy Heinrich. No magic beans for you today."

It wasn't exactly true, but Frenchie didn't need to know that. Devereaux looked over at Mac, who took another step back, his eyes on something Jack couldn't see.

"Frank," Mac said, his tone almost soothing. "Be smart. You don't want to do this."

Frank Devereaux gave Mac a dead-eyed smile. "I told you, MacGyver, the list of things I don't want is extensive. But this, surprisingly, is not on it."

Jack blinked in surprise when Frank bent and grabbed up a little boy—clearly the object of Mac's diverted attention—and held the small body against him as a shield between Jack's deadly aim and himself.

"No!" Mac shouted, reaching out a hand.

"Grab him," Frank ordered the remaining guard, who had been standing closest to Mac. The man immediately wrapped an arm around Mac's throat, Mac grabbing at the arm instinctively.

Jack shifted his aim to the guard, but Mac darted him a look. "No, Jack, wait!"

From somewhere behind him, a guard he hadn't killed appeared from the stairwell and took a shot at Jack. He ducked back behind the edge of the hallway, firing around the corner, away from Mac.

"Mac!" he dared a look around the corner, returning fire as best he could without hitting his friend.

"Jack, don't—" Mac's words were lost with another round of bullets heading Jack's direction and he flattened himself against the wall.

"Riley!"

" _Two seconds,"_ Riley replied. _"I'm looking for who that kid—there! It's Nicolas Devereaux, Frank's son."_

"Bastard used his own kid as a fuckin' shield," Jack growled. He shot around the corner again, his Glock clicking on an empty chamber. Setting his Sig down momentarily, he pulled out another clip from his TAC vest and slammed it home, pulling the slide back to chamber a round. "Talk to me Riley!"

" _Okay, you've got one more red blob that's not going yellow, but the rest took the back stairs to the eight floor."_

"Mac?" he asked, shoving his Sig back into his thigh holster.

" _Is with them."_

Jack took a breath to brace himself, then rounded the corner, flinching away as the remaining guard fired his way. Two shots took the man out and Jack headed in the direction Riley pointed him, finding the spiral staircase up to the eighth floor. He landed on the last stair and turned the corner, one hand gripping the rail, the other holding his Glock at the ready…and nearly walked directly into the barrel of a Berretta.

The bullet hit him square in the chest, knocking him off his feet and back down the stairs.

"Jack!" Mac screamed, his voice anguished.

Jack couldn't breathe. He'd landed sideways on the metal stairs, the impact knocking his Glock from his hand to clatter down the stairway. Pain radiated outward from his sternum and he clawed desperately at his TAC vest, hungry for air. He could hear something tinny and weak in his headset and it took him a moment to realize that it was Riley, crying, calling his name.

"'m here," he wheezed. "'m here, Ri."

" _Jesus Christ, Jack,"_ Riley gasped.

Jack pulled his TAC vest free, then ripped the buttons on his shirt open, working his way to his Kevlar. He could feel the heat of the bullet there, mashed against the armor plating. He was going to be bruised as all hell, but he'd take bruises over a bullet any day.

"'m okay," he said, still trying to catch his breath. The ache in his head surged forward, making itself known. "Didn't…didn't get me."

" _You wore your vest,"_ she sobbed. _"Right?"_

"Yeah, kiddo," he replied, finally able to take a full breath, albeit shaky. "I'm okay."

His head spun as he pulled himself upright on the stairs. He leaned forward, his forehead on the metal railing, trying to settle the world down for a damn minute. Untangling himself from his TAC vest, he pulled his Kevlar free, rubbed gingerly at the bruise forming on his ribcage.

"You got eyes on Mac?" he asked weakly.

Riley sniffed, pulling herself together. _"I still see four red blobs on the infrared. Can you get back up there?"_

"On my way," Jack breathed, pulling his Sig from his holster and checking the clip. He wasn't going to waste time going after his Glock.

" _Jack you need to hurry,"_ Riley was saying.

A sense of urgency swept through Jack at her words and he was on his feet, his shirt flying open, twisting around the top of the spiral staircase once more, weapon up and moving down the hallway, muscle memory putting his entire body on high alert.

"…discuss this," Jack heard Frank saying. "You told me before you don't use guns."

Jack edged around a corner and saw that the eighth floor was unfinished, just a large opened space with steel beams and girders, large sheets of plastic covering some of the unfinished walls and others simply open to the Los Angeles skyline. Construction debris littered the floor and stacks of two-by-fours lined one of the far walls.

Clustered near the center main stairwell, against one of the stacks of lumber, was a stack of several packages wrapped in orange and marked _flammable_. Sitting slumped near the hallway entrance where Jack stood was the guard who had grabbed Mac, his hand pressed against a bleeding wound to his head.

And several feet away, Mac stood facing Jack, the little boy tucked behind his legs, holding a gun aimed at Frank Devereaux.

" _Oh, my God,"_ Riley whispered; she sounded like she was in shock.

Jack subconsciously nodded in agreement. Mac's blue eyes were lit with rage, his lips pulled back in a snarl that looked nothing like the kid he knew. The bruises on his face only accentuated the fury that trembled through every part of him—except his hand.

That gun was rock steady.

"I changed my mind," Mac growled.

Frank stepped backwards, closer to where Jack was hidden in the shadows. "Look, now. Listen, listen," he stuttered, his hands up in surrender. "We can come to an agreement."

Mac tilted his head slightly, and if he hadn't been keeping the boy tucked safely behind him, Jack would swear the man before him wasn't _Mac_ in that moment. "You killed my friend."

"No, now…that wasn't me," Frank babbled. "That was Marco."

"You used your _son_ as a bargaining chip."

"Okay, that one I'll give you," Frank conceded, glancing over his shoulder.

Jack immediately saw his mistake. He'd been too focused on Mac, and not enough on the situation. Clearly he'd not been as hidden as he hoped because the second Mac said, "You tried to kill me," Frank turned and jumped at Jack, using his body as a weapon.

Caught off guard, Jack could only bring up his gun in defense. Frank slammed his forearm against the side of Jack's head, and Jack saw stars, the world dropping out from under him for a moment.

But a moment was all Frank needed to wrestle the Sig free from Jack's grasp and shove the barrel under his chin.

"Jack!" Mac gasped, his voice breaking.

"Looks like he wasn't dead after all," Frank said, grabbing Jack by the back of his shirt and shoving him forward. "But that can be remedied."

"Frank—"

"Do _not_ tell me I don't want to do this," Frank spat, a slightly hysterical laugh bubbling up.

Mac leveled the gun in his grip. "I won't," he said. "But if you hurt him, I'll kill you."

"I doubt that," Frank laughed again. "You almost died _saving_ me—saving me so I could get back to my family," he reached out a hand and beckoned toward Nicolas. "You're not going to kill me in front of my son. You don't have it in you."

"You sure? I mean," Mac braced his right hand with his left, the tremble of fury turning into more of an all over shudder, "we're all monsters after all."

"Nicolas, come here," Frank ordered, gripping Jack's arm and shoving the barrel of the Sig under his chin hard enough Jack knew it would bruise.

He didn't make a sound; he just kept his eyes on Mac.

"Nicolas," Mac said softly. "I want you to go back in that corner over there and make yourself really small. Can you do that?"

Jack saw Nicolas nod, the motion rubbing against Mac's arm.

"Nicolas! Come here!" Frank shouted.

"It's okay," Mac said softly to the boy. "You're going to be okay."

Nicolas shot his father one more wide-eyed, terrified look, then ran to the far side of the room near where the plastic and open-space wall met, tucking his body into the lee of the metal brace so that he was out of sight.

"What now, huh, MacGyver?" Frank demanded, tightening his hold on Jack's arm. "You shoot me, I shoot him."

"I'm not going to shoot you," Mac replied, meeting Jack's eyes.

Jack felt his heart shift. There was something lost in that look. Something broken. The kid's blue eyes were exactly what Carlos had described: hollow.

 _They act like they have it all under control. They have it all together. But…they're just. They're breaking. Inside. Where no one sees. Until it's too late. And we lose them._

 _We're not losing Mac._

"Mac?" Jack managed through his clenched teeth, the gun making it impossible to open his mouth.

Mac gave him a small, sad smile. "It's okay," he said, his eyes on Jack like he was taking in every laugh line, every scar, every gray hair. "You're going to be okay."

Before Jack could react, Mac swung the barrel of his gun toward the stairwell and pulled the trigger. Jack had about two seconds to feel a sense of shock—in all the years he'd known Angus MacGyver, he'd never seen him fire a weapon—before the tannerite blew, sending everyone in the room to the ground.

Jack was stunned, blinking blearily through the smoke. He felt rather than saw Frank scurry away from him. His head spun; he had no idea where the guard was, where Frank was, where Mac was. Coughing, the pressure in his head spiking for one moment into a stabbing pain before leveling out, Jack pushed himself upright, trying to orient.

Mac's bullet had caused a chain reaction in the tightly-compressed tannerite, trigging several mini explosions and, just as Mac had warned, catching fire. The flames greedily worked their way through the packaging and jumped to the debris and quickly ignited the stack of lumber. Jack covered his mouth with the back of his hand, coughing.

"Riley?"

" _The explosion scrambled my infrared,"_ she reported. _"And all I can see on your cams is smoke."_

"Not much else to see," he muttered, climbing to his feet.

" _We got Heinrich,"_ Matty broke in. _"We're sending in the teams."_

"It's about time," Jack rasped, casting about through the smoke. "I'm gonna go look for our boy."

Orienting himself to the spiral staircase that led back down to the seventh floor, Jack recalled the direction Mac had sent Nicolas and headed that way. The smoke was thinning as he moved, thanks to the two open-sided walls, but he could hear the fire growing behind him, eating its way to the central stairwell. In minutes, he spotted Mac's gray Henley, the kid's body curled over something, rocking slightly.

"Mac?"

MacGyver looked up, eyes neon blue in the thinning smoke, tears creating tracks through the soot and bruises on his skin.

"It didn't happen," Mac said, his voice wrecked. "Not this time. Not this time."

Jack crouched down, seeing that Nicolas Devereaux was curled up in Mac's lap, his face buried in Mac's chest, and Mac's arms were protectively circled around the small body.

"You okay, partner?" Jack asked, carefully reaching out to rest a hand on Mac's shoulder. He could feel the kid trembling.

"They didn't get him, Jack," Mac said, blue eyes beseechingly searching brown. "Not this time. They didn't get him this time."

" _Oh, Mac,"_ Riley whispered over the comms.

A crash echoed behind them and Jack shot a look over his shoulder to see that the fire was eating through the plywood surface, sending construction materials and debris down to the floor below.

"Mac, buddy," Jack turned back to his friend. "We gotta go."

"He didn't…he didn't have a face, Jack," Mac said, tears from smoke or anguish spilling over the edges of his lashes. "And I couldn't…I didn't save him. Not then, but I did this time. I saved him this time."

And then Jack knew. He _knew_. The mission that had haunted his friend for months, had turned everything in that amazing mind sideways and sent him into a world of nightmare of heat and ash and blame.

 _Argentina_. The Ambassador.

"Yeah, bud," Jack nodded, squeezing Mac's shoulder. "You saved him."

Nicolas shifted in Mac's lap, tipping large brown eyes up to peer at Jack. He looked exactly like a younger version of the Ambassador's son. It was no wonder Mac was completely _gone_ in this moment.

"But we gotta get out of here, okay?"

Something else fell and a fountain of sparks flew up and out. Mac flinched at the surge of heat, looking wildly over his shoulder.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

"Yeah, exactly," Jack replied. "This is why I shoot the guns and you…do everything else."

Mac blinked at him, his eyes clearing. "Jack…."

"Hey, bud," Jack smiled, ignoring the way the burn of smoke in his eyes. "You back with me?"

"I didn't…," Mac swallowed, looking back at the flames making their way steadily across the floor. "Where's Frank?"

"He and his henchman got lost in all the commotion," Jack said. "But that's not important right now. Let's get you two out of here."

Another crash had them both ducking and Jack looked back to stare in wonder as a twisting tornado of flame worked its way from the stairwell, across the empty space and out through the open wall, the Los Angeles heat sucking at the fire.

"I have a very bad feeling about this," Jack muttered, tightening his grip on Mac's shoulder as the funnel of fire broke and skipped, almost as if it were targeting different floors of the building from the outside.

"— _ack, there's…chopper on…way,"_ Matty's voice crackled in his ear.

Jack put his fingers against his comm. "Say again?"

"Jack," Mac said, sounding much more like himself. Jack looked down and saw that Mac was turning Nicolas around in his lap. "Take him."

"What?" Jack backed up as Mac climbed to his feet, bringing an arm up in protection as the flames surged once more.

"Get him out of here," Mac tried again, picking Nicolas up and tucking the boy's head against his shoulder.

Jack shook his head, feeling his head pound with a vengeance behind his eyes. "I'm getting _both_ of you out of here!"

" _Jack, the fire's spread to the sixth floor,"_ Riley said. It felt like she was shouting in his ear.

"Bud, we gotta go," Jack said, reaching for Mac's arm. "Now."

The familiar sound of rotor blades beating against the air echoed under the roar of the fire. Jack looked wildly around to see an airlift helicopter circle the building, an EMT strapped into the opened door. He tried to tug on Mac's arm, but his partner planted his feet.

"He found me once, Jack," Mac argued, shaking his head, one hand splayed protectively across Nicolas' back. "Frank. He found me once, he'll find me again."

"Not if our people catch him," Jack argued.

Mac turned the little boy in his arms and pushed him toward Jack, leaving the older man with little choice but to collect the boy against him, wincing as Nicolas' tight grip pressed against his bruised chest. He instinctively covered the boy's head with the back of his hand.

"Mac, don't you do this," he pleaded. His partner was battered, bruised, and there was serious question about his mental state at the moment. Jack felt panic eat at the edges of his breath. "Don't you do this; you come with me."

The helicopter made another turn, the crew having spotted the three standing near the open wall. Jack saw a harness and basket being lowered.

"Get him safe," Mac said, wiping at the tears marking paths down his face. "Please, Jack. I _need_ you to do this." He coughed into his shoulder, then looked back at Jack. " _Please_."

"I can't leave you!" Jack shouted, reaching out one hand to grab Mac's shirt. "I won't!"

Mac wrapped his hand around Jack's wrist. "You never have, man. Never. Not once."

"Mac, c'mon," Jack felt his own tears burn his eyes.

"Frank tried to hurt you," Mac shouted over a sudden roar of flame. "He tried to hurt his own son. If he gets away now…who knows what he could do!"

"The Phoenix—"

"Aren't here," Mac broke in. "I am. I have to get him."

" _Jack, the chopper is going to have to pull away from the smoke,"_ Riley reported. _"You have to go now."_

Even without hearing Riley's voice, Mac seemed to know what she'd said to Jack.

"Get him safe," Mac pleaded once more. "I'll see you soon."

Before Jack could say another word, Mac slipped into the smoke, dodging flames as he made his way to the staircase.

"I'm scared," a little voice confessed in Jack's ear.

"I am, too, buddy," Jack replied, wrapping his arm back around Nicolas, tears slipping down his cheeks. "Don't you worry; I gotcha, okay?"

"Okay," Nicolas replied.

Jack moved to the open wall and set Nicolas on his feet. "Don't move okay?"

"Will he get my Papa?" Nicolas asked, causing Jack to do a double-take. "That man, the one who saved me from the gun. Will he get my Papa?"

Jack swallowed. He was so out of his depth here. "Yeah, buddy," he nodded. "He's going to get your Papa. And I'm gonna help him."

"Can he take him away?" Nicolas asked, eyes large and serious, as if there wasn't a fire raging several feet away from him. "Can he make him not come back?"

Jack reached for the harness hanging just outside the opening, and pulled it and the basket toward him.

"Don't you worry about that, buddy, okay? Let's just get you out of this fire."

Nicolas followed Jack's instructions, holding on where told, sitting still when told. Jack strapped the little boy into the basket, tucking the harness behind him.

He started to tug on the harness to indicate it was good to pull up the basket when Nicolas suddenly said, "I don't want him to come back."

Jack blinked at the little face and serious eyes, then signaled that the chopper should pull up the basket. As he backed away from the opening, watching to make sure Nicolas was pulled safely into the chopper, he counted down silently, waiting for the voice on his comm to speak up and rip into him about his choice.

" _What are you still standing there for?"_ Matty barked, surprising the hell out of him. _"Thought you were going to get our boy!"_

"Yes, ma'am," Jack grinned, turning and heading for the stairwell.

* * *

 **Hope Street Building  
Sixth Floor**

 _ **Mac**_

There was fire all around him and he couldn't get Argentina out of his head.

He knew he'd faded out back there, his mind once more skipping on details, ignoring facts in place of memories. He didn't seem to be able to grab onto one thing tight enough to keep it in place. And the heat…good _God_ , the heat. It built and built and all he could think of was that damn blast that had sealed the fate of the Ambassador and left Jack with temporary hearing loss.

 _Do you know what I can do in fifteen seconds, Jack?_

Mac shook his head, trying desperately to focus on _now_. On getting Frank and getting the hell out of there. He'd saved Nicolas; he knew Jack would get the boy out of the building safely. It wasn't about failing this time. It was about stopping this from happening again.

To someone else. To people he loved.

Mac jumped back from a surging flame, blocking the heat from his face with a raised arm. The stairwell had felt like a furnace, the metal scaffolding hot to the touch. But he'd seen Frank take off through the partially assembled offices on the sixth floor like he knew where he was going and Mac wasn't going to let him slip through whatever net the authorities thought they'd built outside.

"Frank!" Mac bellowed, pulling the other man up short.

"You're tenacious, I'll give you that," Frank shouted. "It's over, MacGyver. Let it go."

"You're coming with me," Mac stated.

Frank picked up a piece of an office chair—unassembled—and threw it in Mac's direction. Mac easily ducked and circled Frank, moving away from the heat of the fire, intent on cutting Frank off from whatever escape route he'd been heading toward. Frank threw something else—a support pole from a desk? Mac couldn't tell—with a wordless shout of frustration.

"Goddamn Boy Scout!" Frank yelled. "You won. Okay? Just let me go."

Something tripped in Mac's brain, something with edges that sliced as it made its tangled journey to reality.

 _I will win, and you will help me._

A blank towel, fire burning through his muscles, drowning while handcuffed to a chair.

This wasn't just about stopping Frank from doing anything like this again; Mac was _pissed_. And he wanted the man to pay.

"I want to know why, Frank," Mac said, tossing pieces of furniture aside, making is way toward the man who had tortured him. " _Why_?"

"Seriously?" Frank lifted a hefty-looking steel pole and held it over his shoulder like a bat, backing away from Mac and toward the stairwell. "You're really going to make me do the whole villain's exposition thing?"

Mac spied a yellow tension strap coiled on the floor next to a stack of boxes, the metal catches gleaming in the light from the fire. His mind downshifted, finding a new gear, seeing the angles and the outcomes.

"Why _me_ , Frank?" Mac shouted, sweat rolling down the sides of his face from the fire's heat.

"Pretty sure we covered this when I was _drowning_ you!" Frank shouted, close enough now to swing the pole like a homerun hero, narrowly missing Mac's head.

Ducking out of the way, Mac saw movement toward the stairwell. A figure moving through the smoky shadows, rounding the corner of the metal scaffolding.

 _Jack_.

His partner looked like rage personified. If Jack could have flown over the flames by the power of his anger alone, Mac knew he would be at his side at that moment. But the heat pushed him back, trapping him on the opposite side of the stairwell from Mac.

Mac saw Jack level a weapon, trying to get a clean shot on Frank. He was so distracted by seeing Jack, he missed Frank winding up for a second swing. The pole caught his ribcage and he stumbled to the side with a cry of pain.

Frank raised the pole over his head and Mac rolled quickly out of the way, narrowly avoiding another hit. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the tension strap and scrambled on his hands and knees to the edge of the stairwell. Frank shouted something unintelligible, charging at Mac through the smoke.

"Mac!" Jack shouted a warning from the other side of the stairwell.

Mac flipped the metal clasp of the tension strap around the scaffolding, tying the fastest bowline knot of his life. He ducked and rolled as Frank came at him again, the pole clanging loudly against the scaffolding. With a focused flip of his wrist, he snapped the opposite end of the tension strap around Frank's ankle, ducking as Frank swung again, and tangled the strap in another knot.

"Enough!" Frank shouted, the pole coming down on the center of Mac's back before he could dodge the hit.

Mac hit the ground with a cry of pain, the air leaving him in a rush. Not realizing his ankle was tangled in the strap, Frank kicked at Mac's side, flipping him over. Mac lay gasping, his body thrumming in reaction to the latest hits.

"I am done dealing with you bleeding-heart, save-the-world, heroes," Frank panted, raising the pole over his head. He wavered slightly as the building shook around them. "You can all just go to hell," he growled, swinging the pole down.

Mac reached up on pure instinct, catching the pole in one hand, stopping it short of smashing against his face.

"You first," he repeated, kicking out with one leg and connecting with Frank's chest, sending the other man off-balance.

For one suspended moment, it seemed that Frank hadn't moved, but then with a strangled cry—more of surprise than pain—he flipped backwards over the scaffolding, falling down the center of the stairwell, until the tension strap caught him and suspended him two floors below the worst of the fire.

Mac leveraged up on his elbows, blinking in surprise that it had actually worked. He climbed to a shaky stance, catching Jack's eyes across the stairwell. The relief on Jack's face shimmered through the fire working its way through the fuel stashed in the opened office space and hit Mac with a tangible force. He offered Jack a tired smile, ready to figure out how to get the two of them out of there, when Jack's expression shifted.

"Behind you!" Jack shouted.

Mac turned, startled. Marco stood behind him, face bleeding, shirt torn, hair singed, a gun raised and pointed at Mac. He'd forgotten about Marco.

Lifting his hands slowly, Mac thought furiously. "Marco, I—"

He never got to finish his sentence. The bullet hit him high on his left shoulder, sending him spinning off-balance, free-falling back over the edge of the stairwell.

* * *

 _ **Jack**_

" _I'm trying, Jack,"_ Riley snapped. _"I can't find you a path that doesn't exist!"_

"I gotta get over there, Ri," Jack returned. "That guy's gonna kill hi—"

And then Mac kicked out and Frank fell over the edge of the stairwell.

"Oh, holy hell," Jack muttered, leaning over the edge of the scaffolding, expecting to see Frank Devereaux splattered sixth stories down. Instead he saw the man dangling several floors down by a yellow tension strap. "I'll be a dirty name."

Jack looked up, seeing Mac pull himself to his feet, and offered his partner a relieved grin. He'd done it. He caught the bastard.

Mac looked completely exhausted. His needle was on E, and the light was on. It was clear that no matter how much he revved that engine in his mind, he was going nowhere, fast. Jack was going to call over to him that they'd find a way down when he caught sight of a looming shadow.

"Behind you!" he shouted, watching in horror as Mac turned and lifted his hands.

The shot made Jack jump. He felt rather than heard his own shout of anguish as Mac flipped over the side of the scaffolding from the impact of the bullet. Without thinking, he lifted his weapon and squeezed the trigger. Multiple times. He lost count of how many. He shot until the gun clicked on empty and Marco lay in a heap on the other side of the stairwell.

Rushing to the edge, he looked over, _hoping_.

" _Oh, thank God,"_ he heard Riley whisper as his headgear caught sight of Mac hanging by one arm from the scaffolding just below the fifth floor landing.

The building shuddered again and Jack knew the fire was eating its way through the building. He could see flames on the lower floors now; it was both above and below them. Moving on pure instinct, Jack circled down the stairwell, dodging falling debris and ducking bursts of flame, reaching the fifth floor in seconds.

He could hear Riley trying to coach him in how he could go around and get to Mac from below, but he could see his partner now: Mac wasn't going to be able to hold on long enough for Jack to get clever about reaching him from below. Taking a heated breath, Jack dove through the flames that separated him from Mac. He shrugging out of his loose, burning shirt when he breached the other side, his T-shirt his only protection from the heat and flames now.

"Mac!" he shouted. "Mac, you hang on! I'm coming, buddy!"

He slid to the floor, stretching out on his stomach and leaning over the edge. About twelve feet lower, Frank hung from one ankle, screaming for someone to get him the hell out of there. Jack ignored him; his whole focus was on Mac.

"Mac," Jack called, hanging both arms over the edge of the floor. "Hey, kid."

Mac was staring below him; Jack couldn't see his expression, but he could imagine that drop looked pretty terrifying to someone with a fear of heights. He could see Mac's grip slipping, but the kid wouldn't look up.

"Mac! Hey! MacGyver! Look at me, bud!" Jack shouted, scooting over a bit further, reaching for Mac's wrist. "I need you to help me out here, okay?"

The top of Mac's left shoulder was red; that arm hanging uselessly down along his side. Jack could see his fingers stretching as the grip slipped a bit further.

"Angus!" Jack called, his voice cracking. "You look at me! Right now, brother!"

At that, Mac's head rolled until he was looking up at Jack, and the pain in those blue eyes nearly pulled Jack over the edge. He stretched to his limit, finally able to wrap his fingers around Mac's wrist. Mac blinked blurrily up at him.

"Reach up," Jack said, flinching as a piece of ceiling fell down near him. "You can do it."

"Jack-!"

"Just reach up and grab my hand, kid," Jack coached. "I got you. I swear to God I won't let you fall."

With what looked like a monumental effort, Mac raised his left arm, his growl of pain slipping out through clenched teeth. Jack caught his hand, and for a moment, he simply held on. His head was pounding, making it hard for him to focus. He didn't have enough strength to pull Mac's weight back up to his floor.

He could hear both Matty and Riley in his ear, one saying that a team was coming in to grab Devereaux, the other saying that emergency teams were surrounding the building, but he was too busy focusing on Mac to pay much attention.

"I gotta swing you, okay?" Jack told him.

Mac frowned. Sweat rolled down his face, turning his bruises shiny. Jack could feel their hands shaking and couldn't tell if it was from him or Mac at this point.

"You're gonna be okay, Mac," Jack promised. "You trust me?"

"Yes," Mac replied immediately, his voice thin with pain, but solid with purpose.

"I'm gonna swing you to the right," Jack grunted. "Well, uh…my right, your left." Mac simply blinked up at him. "When I say, you let go of me and roll to the floor, okay?"

Mac's eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose and his eyes rolled closed. Jack had a moment of panic, but when Mac's eyes opened again, he realized the kid was just bracing himself.

"You ready?"

Mac nodded quickly, the trembling in his arms worsening. He looked terrified.

"You want to go on three, or three then go?"

"Seriously? You're switching movies on me _now_?" Mac snapped—and in that moment Jack knew his partner was back. He wasn't giving up on Jack anytime soon.

"One, two—" And Jack released his hold, not breathing until he saw Mac hit the ground one floor down, his cry of pain music to Jack's ears.

" _I can't believe that friggin' worked,"_ Riley exhaled on comms as Jack shimmied back, beating flames away from his pants and scrambled to stairwell—which was quickly becoming scary hot—and ran down to the fourth floor hallway.

"Mac!"

He could hear Frank shouting from where he hung from the tension band, just below them. He could hear the roar of flames above him and the crash as parts of the building fell free. But he couldn't hear his partner.

" _Mac_!"

And then he saw him: prone, face turned away, one ankle still caught at the edge of the scaffolding. Jack slid to his knees at Mac's side, gently rolling him over. The air around them was hot—too hot. He gathered the kid up against him and bent low over Mac, one hand at his partner's neck, his ear to Mac's mouth.

"Let's agree that we _never_ do that again," Mac muttered, causing Jack to jerk back in relief and surprise.

"I can get on board with that," Jack chuckled, tears burning his eyes once more. "You scared me, kid."

Mac swallowed, his brows pulled together in pain. "I kinda scared me, too."

Pulling Mac's Henley away from the bloody wound on his shoulder, Jack shook his head. "Jesus, kid. You're a mess."

"Ahh!" Mac shouted, neck arching to get away from Jack's probing fingers, gasping as Jack pulled his hand back. He groaned, holding his bleeding shoulder with his right hand. "Shit, that hurts."

"Bud," Jack shook his head. "I got nothing to stop this bleeding. Gonna need to tear your shirt."

"'s okay," Mac slurred, his eyes rolling closed. "Got more."

Frowning, Jack eased him to the ground and ripped at the seam until he pulled the left sleeve free from Mac's shirt. The hole was high on the shoulder, in the muscle above the collar bone, and was a through-and-through. He tied the loose sleeve tight, wincing in sympathy as Mac cried out. When he was finished he called Mac's name, worry spiking when the kid didn't respond.

He tapped Mac's right cheek carefully—avoiding the bruises as best he could—and tried again. "Mac, c'mon, buddy. It's getting pretty hot in here."

Mac groaned, rolling his head to the side. Jack patted his cheek again and saw Mac's eyes squint in response, blinking aware groggily.

"There you are," Jack smiled, his skin feeling stretched with the motion because of the heat. "You ready to get outta here?"

Mac blinked again, nodding. He started to sit up, but jerked to a stop, pain stealing his breath. Jack eased him up right and held him against his chest as he got his bearings.

"Look at it this way, you get another scar to add to your collection," Jack said with a forced smile.

"L-lucky me," Mac stuttered, reaching out to grab the end of Jack's t-shirt like a lifeline.

Jack didn't know if his partner realized this had become a habit of his when he was hurt—anchoring himself to Jack. But he wasn't going to stop him now.

"Riley," Jack called, one hand at his comms.

Mac's eyes opened in startled surprise, looking around as if he expected Riley to be standing next to him.

"We need an evac route. Those stairs are a no-go."

" _Yeah, the teams are struggling to get in to Frank,"_ Riley reported. Jack closed his eyes. Well, wasn't _that_ just fucking perfect? " _I'm looking for a secondary stairway from where you are."_

"And Frank?"

" _Can we…leave him?"_ Riley posed.

Jack looked down at his battered partner, thinking of the way Mac had screamed just before those bastards nearly drown him. If it were up to him….

Mac frowned, as if he knew what Riley had suggested. "It's not about who he is," Mac said, reaching for Jack's arm and using it to leverage himself upright, slumping weakly against Jack. "It's about who we are." He looked down. "Who I am."

"Riley," Jack sighed, fingers against his comm once more. "Find us that alternate route. We'll bring Frenchie with us."

" _Copy that."_

Groaning, Jack stood and tried to reach the tension band without actually touching the heated metal scaffolding. He ended up banging Frank against the metal bars a couple of times in his attempt, but he was eventually able to haul the man close enough that he was able to pull him up to the fourth floor landing.

Frank's face was beet-red from hanging upside down for so long—and from the chimney effect of the fire. Between that and his wrenched leg, he was extremely docile. Still, that didn't stop Jack from threatening to toss him down the non-existent elevator shaft—this time with no rope to anchor him—if he so much as looked sideways at his partner.

The partner in question was currently standing with his knees locked, looking as if a sigh would topple him. With the heat rolling over them from above and below, Jack was just about ready to admit that he wasn't sure they were getting out of this one.

" _Jack!"_ Riley's voice was excited and relieved and Jack felt himself go weak. _"There's a service elevator on the fourth floor that's not finished."_

"You want us to take an unfinished elevator?" Jack asked, confused. He looked at Mac, marveling at the way the kid's face lit up with an idea while Jack was still forming the end of his sentence.

"Construction entrance," Mac said, just as Riley replied, _"No, no, there's a construction entrance through there."_

Jack looked at Mac, "So you're saying we can get out that way?"

"Yes," Mac and Riley replied in unison.

Jack shook his head. "You two are weirding me out on so many levels right now," he muttered. "Let's go; I'm starting to feel a little extra crispy here."

Riley guided them through the swiftly crumbling building, Frank limping along next to Jack, the back of his soot-covered suit shirt balled up in Jack's hand. Mac trailed behind, clutching his bleeding shoulder. Jack kept calling out to him every few feet to make sure the kid was still with him.

"You there, kid?"

"Yep."

Move forward, drag Frank, blink smoke from his eyes.

"Mac?"

"On your six."

Move forward, drag Frank, blink smoke from his eyes.

"You with me?"

"'til the end of the line."

That one made Jack smile, even if Mac's voice was weak and rough and contained not even an ounce of his normal lilt.

"Is this Marco Polo routine really necessary?" Frank sighed as Jack found the service elevator entrance, yanking the metal door open.

Jack clipped the man on his ear. "You tell me, hoss," he snapped, pushing Frank in front of him as they found another set of—much more rickety—metal stairs. "You beat the hell out of him, shocked him into unconsciousness, drowned him, and then shot him. You think there's any reason in there I might be worried?"

"Touching," Frank grumbled.

Jack shoved the man forward and tripped him in the same motion. The construction stairs weren't built to last; they were assembled in what felt like a narrow chimney, about the size of a typical elevator. When Frank fell to his hands and knees, the staircase trembled. Jack picked Frank back up by the collar of his shirt, grimacing as he looked over his shoulder at Mac.

"Whoops."

Mac didn't reply, just gave Jack a tired smile and continued forward ahead of them. Jack could see the energy leak out of Mac with every step, the kid's movements unsteady and wavering, his good shoulder ricocheting against the wall every few steps. The heat from the fire blistered the paint on the walls surrounding them. Jack could hear a roaring sound above him and when they reached the third floor, pieces of construction from the top floors began to filter down through the opening, landing in scattered piles around them, one even hitting a glancing blow on Jack's shoulder.

"Must move faster," Frank demanded, his voice panicky.

"Yeah, I think he's right," Jack said, watching Mac nod in agreement.

They picked up the pace, despite the protest of their bodies. Jack could hear his comms crackle as they reached the second floor.

"Riley?" He tapped the comm. "Say again. Repeat, did not copy. Say again."

"… _building…unstable…."_

It was Matty's voice, not Riley's. And no shit the building was unstable. There were pieces of flaming ceiling falling on him. He pushed Frank to find another gear.

"Matty? Repeat last."

"… _service entrance…-ack,"_ Matty continued.

Jack shook his head at Mac's questioning expression. They hit the open space on the first floor and Jack felt the building tremble around them again.

"I sure hope she's telling us that they're all waiting for us at the service entrance," Jack muttered. "As soon as we find the damn door."

Another piece of debris fell through the opening, and this time it hit the stairs with enough impact that it jarred a section loose. Jack looked up, blinking in shock as what looked like a burning surfboard came hurtling toward them, bringing with it a section of stairs.

"Look out!" Mac shouted, pivoting and grabbing a handful of Jack's shirt, shoving both him and Frank to the side.

The sound of the metal staircase hitting the ground was deafening. Jack let go of Frank long enough to cover his ears, his fragile head slamming home a punch of protest at the sound hard enough to make him see stars. Catching his breath, he slowly pushed to his hands and knees, peering around in the darkness to find Mac and Frank. What had looked like a burning surfboard was on the ground near him, offering him ambient light.

"Jack?"

"I'm here," Jack called back, not liking the sound of his partner's voice at all.

"I...uh, found the door," Mac called back.

In that moment, a bright light pierced their darkness and Jack squinted, holding a hand up over his eyes. One of the rescue workers had also found the door, it seemed, but when he opened it, Jack was finally able to see their predicament. The section of stairs had fallen on Mac—not enough to hurt him, but he was effectively trapped only because he was all that was keeping the heavy metal bar from crushing Frank Devereaux's neck.

"Jesus, Mac," Jack breathed, his eyes skimming over the way Mac's arms shook as he held the bar in place. Another piece of burning debris fell down, glancing off Jack's shoulder.

"Get him out of here," Mac said, his voice strained.

Jack wanted to protest, but he knew it would just burn up time they didn't have. Carefully climbing over the mess of metal, he waved the rescue worker back. The last thing they needed were more people trapped in this mess. Grabbing Frank's shoulders, Jack started pulling, easing the man free from the tangled structure.

"Okay, now you," Jack grunted, hefting Frank's dead weight over his shoulder and wincing as the effort pulled at his bruised chest and stabbed through his head like a warning.

"Go," Mac wheezed as he started to push himself free of the wreckage. "I'll be right behind you, _go_!"

Seeing that Mac was making his way free, Jack turned and headed for where the rescue workers had opened the double doors, letting in the light from the service vehicles. He breached the doorway of the building, relishing the feel of the evening air against his overheated face, and handed Frank off to the first EMT he saw. He was about to turn back toward the building to help Mac out when an impossible, terrifying cacophony echoed from all points of the building.

"Back!" Someone shouted, a hand on his arm, tugging at him. "Get back! Everybody back!"

Before his eyes, the center of the building seemed to sink inward, one side of the structure crumbling as the other three sides tilted against each other like a half-built house of cards. The sound was awful and enormous and Jack couldn't hear himself screaming Mac's name until the dust began to settle and the only thing echoing were the car alarms and crackling flames.

Fear unlike anything he'd ever experienced dug claws into his heart. This wasn't fear of battle, or fear of pain, or fear of dying. This was fear of loss, and it overwhelmed him.

"Jack, wait—"

This time Riley's voice wasn't in his ear; she was next to him. Her face was pale and tear-streaked, her hand on his heated skin cool and trembling.

"You can't," she said simply.

"He's _in there_ , Riley," Jack protested, his voice cracking and foreign.

Riley shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. Jack registered one of the EMTs wrapping an arm around his shoulders, attempting to turn him away, get him to safety, and he shoved the man away. Another arm reached for him and he started swinging.

He had no idea who he caught with his fists; all that mattered was that he got himself free and was running back toward the shattered building, his own words echoing in his heart, _"None of you realize what losing that kid would do to me. It would end me."_

"Mac!" He screamed, climbing over rubble, headed for the service entrance doors. "MAC!"

He was forced to move some of the larger bits of cement to yank the doors back open, the space inside barely illuminated by the fire, the air choked with dust.

"Mac!"

For one blinding moment he had a flash of realization of what Mac must have felt when he'd been digging Jack free from that building in Farah. The utter terror, the complete denial, the need to know. If nothing else, to _see_.

"Don't be dead," he whispered, the plea screaming in his heart. "Don't be dead. _Please_ don't be dead."

He ripped loose bits of stairway out of his way, climbing through the maze of metal.

"Mac!"

"Jack—"

He froze. He didn't even breathe. Closing his eyes, he listened with every cell in his body.

"Jack?"

 _There_. To his right. He saw the beams of flashlights bobbing behind him.

"HEY!" He shouted to the rescue workers who followed him inside. "He's here! I heard him—he's here!"

Light descended and suddenly there were arms and hands and bodies pulling debris aside and finally, _finally_ Jack could see him. He was not crushed, not impaled, not dead. He was pale and bruised and bloody, but he'd been all those things before a building fell on him.

"Oh, kid," Jack breathed.

The stair frame that had nearly killed Frank Devereaux had acted as both shield and cage, keeping most of the debris from landing on Mac. The rescuers were able to pull the metal free and clear a path. Mac was conscious and Jack watched in amazement as he was pulled carefully to his feet.

Jack pushed through the rescue workers and grabbed Mac up, holding the younger man against him in a crushing hug.

"God _damn_ , it's good to see you, Mac," Jack managed around his tears, one hand at the back of Mac's head, holding him close.

"'s good to see you, too," Mac muttered against Jack's neck.

"I thought I lost you," Jack choked out, removing any space between them as he felt Mac's arms wrap around him weakly.

"'m still…here," Mac replied, just before his knees seemed to disappear.

His arms slipped away from where they'd clasped Jack's back and Jack bent slightly to take on the extra weight.

"Mac?" Jack breathed, holding the kid close, terrified of the stillness, the silence.

He didn't move until he felt a soft exhale of air against his neck. Without hesitating, Jack shifted his hand from the back of Mac's head to under his shoulders, stooping to slide his other hand beneath the kid's knees.

"Easy does it," Jack muttered, scooping Mac up against him. "That's it, kid. You're doing fine. You're doing fine."

"Let us help you, sir," offered one of the rescuers.

Jack just hefted Mac as the kid's head lolled onto Jack's shoulder, one arm resting across his narrow waist, the other hanging loosely down Jack's back.

"I got him," Jack replied turning carefully toward the door. "He's good. I've got him."

The rescuers moved in front of him, clearing debris so that he was able to walk from the building, through the rubble, and toward the waiting ambulances without worrying that he'd be tripped up by anything. Without realizing it, he kept up a soothing cadence of meaningless reassurance, his voice rumbling low in his chest, against the side of Mac's face.

"Get you back…get you fixed up…you're gonna be just fine, kid. Just fine. I'm here, now…I gotcha."

Mac didn't move. Didn't make a sound, but Jack could feel erratic puffs of breath against his neck, and that was enough. It had to be enough.

"Jack?" Riley called, her eyes on the two of them emerging from the destroyed, burning building.

"I got him," Jack said, looking at Riley, but not really seeing her.

"Is he…?"

"He's still here," Jack replied, repeating Mac's words as they were the only anchor he had left. "He's still here."

He eased Mac down onto a waiting stretcher, staying close as he saw an oxygen mask fitted over the kid's face, an IV inserted into his hand. The bruises were muted by dust, the blood caked by the same. Mac looked impossibly young lying so still with his eyes closed against the darkness that wrapped around them like a cloak. Jack didn't once look away as the stretcher was loaded into the back of the ambulance, he simply followed along, sitting up by Mac's head, his eyes on his partner.

He missed Riley sinking to her knees, exhaustion marking her whole body. He missed Matty pulling Riley into a hug. He missed Frank being handcuffed to a gurney. He missed the police escorting them to the hospital.

The only thing that mattered to Jack Dalton that night was the rise and fall of his partner's chest and the fingers clutching his like a lifeline.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Phoenix Foundation Medical Facility**

 **12 hrs later**

 _ **Mac**_

As the voices filtered into his perception, Mac realized he'd actually been hearing them murmuring in the background for a while now without truly registering that they were voices.

"…extreme exhaustion." He didn't know that one. It was a reedy, narrow voice as if the speaker were pushing words through a straw. "We've treated the taser burns—"

"Wasn't a taser." _Jack_. He'd know that drawl from beyond the veil. "They used a stun baton on him."

"Yes, well," Reedy Voice replied. "They did so four separate times that we could find. The burns are superficial—painful, sure, but we've treated and bandaged them and with time, they should heal just fine. It's the effects of the current that are problematic now."

"Problematic, how?" _Matty_. Using her Boss Voice. She was clearly through taking shit from anyone.

Mac registered that he was propped up slightly in a bed, the angle easing the pressure on his lungs. He could feet the weight of a thick bandage high on his left shoulder and that arm was immobilized. His right leg was canted slightly—a position he often found himself in when sleeping—and there was a hand resting on his bent knee.

"Muscle fatigue, cognitive issues," Reedy Voice sighed. "He's got a bit of a road to recovery."

"The kid got the hell beat out of him and was shot, doc, so…I think that's putting it mildly," Jack muttered.

Mac felt the hand on his knee flex with the response. Of course Jack was near him. Nothing else made sense at the moment.

"The GSW caused minimal damage, thankfully," Reedy Voice—or wait, that was his doctor, according to Jack—replied. "We repaired the muscle damage and stitched him up. He'll need some physical therapy, but should recover without a problem. The bruises…," the doctor sighed. "To be honest, I'm more worried about the water in his lungs than the bruises."

"Why?" _Riley_. So, she was here, too. Mac started to feel like he was on display. Where the hell was Bozer?

"MacGyver is a soldier, and I've seen both he and Jack in here enough to know that he can take a few hits and recover," the doctor replied. Huh, so…he knew this guy, apparently. He didn't feel like opening his eyes to figure out who he was. "We're giving him some antibiotics to stave off pneumonia, but…. Was MacGyver waterboarded?"

The team was quiet for two beats too long.

"There is also evidence of cartilage damage in his chest," the doctor went on. "I'm assuming he had to be revived at one point?"

"He wouldn't do what they wanted." Ah, there was Bozer. And apparently he was caught up on current events as well. One less thing for Mac to have to cover, then.

"Yes, well," the doctor huffed. "I'm familiar with that particular proclivity. He'll need to be watched. Not just for physical ramifications. Torture the nature he's sustained can have lasting effects that aren't easily treated by antibiotics and pain meds."

"So, bottom line it for us, doc," Jack snapped. Man, he sounded wrecked. Mac almost wanted to scoot over so that his partner could lie down, but he couldn't bring himself to even blink his eyes open.

"We're keeping him overnight for observation," the doctor informed them. "We'll hydrate him, give him some pain meds and antibiotics, and as long as nothing develops along the lines of infection, he can go home tomorrow, but…," Mac had the sense that the doctor was looking at Matty as he said the next part, "he needs to _rest_. Not the Phoenix version of R&R. Unless your plan is to permanently damage him."

"No, that is _not_ our plan," Matty retorted crisply. "I've already taken both Jack and MacGyver off rotation for three weeks." She sighed. "And with Bozer out until his shoulder heals, Riley, I'm going to have to connect you with another team for a bit."

"Understood," Riley replied softly, a note of reluctance underscoring the obedience.

"Jill was telling me there were some issues in the lab," Matty went on. "It sounds like a perfect job for you—and I imagine it will take you a few weeks to resolve."

"No problem, Matty," Riley said, and this time Mac could hear the smile in her voice.

"Thank you, Doctor Evans," Matty said. _Evans_ , that's right. Mac remembered now. Thin guy, looked like a young Jim Carey. "We'll check in with you in the morning. The rest of you," her voice undulated as she turned, "get some rest. We'll regroup tomorrow."

Mac heard murmurs and shuffles, but the hand on his knee didn't move. He waited, expecting the typical argument.

"Are you okay?" Matty's voice softened to the point it almost didn't sound like her.

"I'm not the one lying in hospital bed," Jack replied.

"Maybe you should be."

"I'm okay, Matty," Jack's voice was low, a vulnerability to it that Mac rarely heard outside of conversations with him. It made him anxious; when he felt Jack's fingers tighten on his knee, he knew Jack felt it, too. They'd been through too many battles together to not have their hearts beat in sync. "I just…I need to get the image of seeing him through that scope…. I mean, I watched this kid drown. And I couldn't do _anything_."

There was a sound, like metal clicking together, and then Matty was saying, "Keep that ice on your chest."

And Mac remembered. He remembered seeing Jack fly backwards, tumbling down the stairs from the force of the bullet.

And he remembered his world shattering apart in that moment.

The hand on his knee tightened slightly.

"Look, you did everything you could, Jack. You brought him back to us." Matty gave him an out but Jack said nothing in reply. "I'm worried about you."

"Don't be."

"I think you're forgetting which one of us is the boss here," Matty's tone became teasing. "I can worry about you if I damn well please."

"I'll be fine as soon as he's fine."

"You killed twelve people to get to him, Jack," Matty pointed out. "Don't think I don't know what that does to you."

Mac stopped breathing for a moment. He hadn't realized….

"Eight," Jack corrected, his fingers patting Mac's knee as if in reassurance. "Riley confirmed a few of them were pulled out of the building alive."

A heavy quiet descended over the room and Mac felt himself sinking into his bed, worrying that this line of questioning would end with Matty insisting that Jack leave. He felt himself relax when Matty simply said, "See you tomorrow, Dalton."

Several beats ticked by before Mac heard Jack's low rumble, easy and familiar, roll over him like a blanket.

"You can open your eyes now, faker."

Mac obeyed, though it took a lot more effort than he'd anticipated. His face ached—he could feel butterfly bandages holding the swollen skin on his left cheek together, and his lip felt crusty and tight where it had been split. He rolled his head slowly against the pillow to better bring Jack into focus, and could tell that the blood had been washed out of his hair: it didn't itch anymore.

"Hey," he croaked.

"Water?"

Mac nodded and drank greedily as Jack held the straw for him.

"How'd you know?"

"What, that you were awake that whole time?" Jack scoffed. "Brother, I'm not new. Your whole body was tense."

Mac swallowed hard. Jack wasn't wrong. His body felt like a clenched fist. There were strange levels of pain—from discomfort to agony—stretched across his torso and head. He tried to shift slightly and everything protested at once, stealing his breath.

"Easy," Jack said softly, patting his knee. "You're not going to want to move around much for a while."

"Guess I got that time off after all," Mac replied, feeling his voice rattle his chest.

Jack huffed, leaning back in his chair, his hand staying put on Mac's knee. "Not the best way to go about it, hoss."

"I didn't exactly plan to get grabbed by a psychopath, y'know."

Jack looked down, his shoulders bowing as if he lacked the strength to even tease about it. "I know."

They were quiet a moment. Mac watched the creases on Jack's face smooth out as his smile faded. He thought about what Matty had said. Thought about what Jack had put himself through to save him.

"What happened to Frank?"

Jack looked up, a half smile folding rivers of laugh lines into a sad imitation of his usual mirth. "Matty worked her magic. He and his pal Hans—"

"Heinrich," Mac corrected.

"Whatever," Jack waved his free hand dismissively. They'd fucked with his family; he couldn't be bothered to respect their names, even if Mac knew he would have them tattooed on his heart. "They're in separate interrogation rooms under lock and key. She'll get one to flip on the other and use them both to get the big guy, Rainer. Done and done."

"And Marco?" Mac didn't want to move his leg and dislodge Jack's hand, but his muscles were starting to cramp up. He decided to press himself up in the bed a bit. Jack simply shifted his hand down to rest on his ankle.

"He the one who shot you?" Jack asked, eyes narrowing. "And half-drowned you?"

 _And brought me back…and offered me food…_. "Yeah."

Jack shook his head. "He's gone, brother."

Mac nodded, looking away, processing. "And Nicolas?"

"He's in a temporary home right now," Jack told him. "Riley's tracking down the kid's mom."

The room was quiet. They hadn't hooked Mac up to anything other than a few IVs and a pulse ox, so they didn't even have a heart monitor to fill the void. Mac could feel Jack's eyes on him, waiting.

"I wasn't going to actually help him," Mac offered. Even though he'd looked at the plans. Even though he'd talked about the possible solutions. Even though.

Jack drew his head back. "You think I'm worried about _that_?"

Mac shook his head, unable to meet his friend's eyes.

"I'm worried about _you_ , bud."

"I'm okay."

"Kid, you're so far away from okay you'll need to jump through hyperspace to get back there," Jack scoffed. "Look, we don't have to talk about this now. You need to sleep. But we _are_ going to talk about it. So…just set your mind on that."

Mac nodded, letting his head sink back into the pillows. He closed his eyes. "Wish we had some music or something."

"Is that right?"

Mac shifted so that his weight was off his left shoulder and bruised face, inadvertently turning to face Jack. He blinked his eyes open, but stared at a point just beyond where Jack was sitting.

"'s like my thoughts are too loud," he confessed. "And they won't…," he waved a hand in front of his face, "line up. I can't…."

"Cognitive dissonance," Jack said, with a nod as though that explained it all.

Mac shifted his eyes to Jack's face, his own chuff of humor surprising him. "Not quite."

"It's what the doc said." Jack removed his hand to cross his arms over his chest and Mac immediately felt untethered.

Mac gave him a look. "He said cognitive _issues_ …. Cognitive dissonance is a consequence of someone performing an action that contradicts their personal beliefs."

He was actually quite relieved he could pull up a Webster-worthy contradiction to Jack's statement. Maybe he wasn't as far gone as people thought.

"You mean like…someone who is overtly against using guns firing a weapon to save someone else's life?"

Mac flinched. Being so transparent when it came to Jack was sometimes painful. He looked away, running his tongue over the wounds on his lip.

"Get some sleep," Jack said, narrowing his eyes at Mac. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Maybe I will, too. I'm supposed to be resting my noggin anyway. Damn concussion."

Mac watched Jack scroll through a few things on his phone for a moment, then smiled tiredly when he heard the first few chords of _Enter Sandman_ slip through the cell phone speakers.

"Really?" he mumbled sleepily.

Jack grinned, sitting back. "You know damn well I fell asleep to Metallica more than once when we were in the Sandbox."

Mac chuckled, closing his eyes and letting his tired body relax.

Sleep turned time sideways. When the dreams started, he fought through them like one desperate to hang on to oblivion. Images flashed through his mind like a view master on speed—disjointed, unconnected, terrifying.

Nikki falling into the lake, a bullet in her chest. Red dots center mass on each of his team from Murdoc's gun sights. A wolf in a snowstorm. A blank towel and the sound of water. Zoe's tear-filled eyes. Bozer bleeding on the lab floor. Jack looming over him as he suffocated in the middle of a clean room. A bearded man punching him with a fist full of rolled quarters.

His mom's fragile smile. His father's back. His granddad's hands.

It was like walking through a room full of spider webs. Each time he brushed one away, another came back until they were looping and speeding up, his brain desperate to hit the brakes. He felt panicked, desperate gasps for breath hauling him into the waking world with a vengeance. He didn't register that he was actually sitting up until he felt Jack's hands wrapping around his shoulders, his voice a low hum of reassurance.

"Slow and easy…," Jack encouraged.

He was leaning against Jack's arm, his unmarked cheekbone pressed to Jack's shoulder, and he was sobbing for air. Mac remembered so many times he'd done this before, brought Mac back from the edge, steadied him, breathed _for_ him.

"Angus, just breathe. I got you."

Without warning, Mac's memory was flashing through sand-filled streets, Jack handing him chewing gum to fix to the undercarriage of their Humvee, Jack standing on a pressure-plated bomb in a burned-out building, Jack buried under a ton of rubble.

He was pushing against Jack's arm, kicking free of his blankets, trapped…he was _trapped_ and he couldn't _fucking breathe…._

The sharp pain in the back of his hand brought him around.

Blinking in surprise, he realized he'd fought his way out of his bed and was standing with his back against the wall across the room from Jack, his movement having yanked out one of his IVs. He could feel a thin stream of blood trickling down his hand to the tip of his middle finger. For a long moment, he simply stood and breathed, eyes fixed on nothing.

Jack was standing across from him, hands out in surrender. Over on the table near the bed, music from Jack's cell phone played on. Voices in the hallway beyond his room layered over each other like stacking blocks.

"Hey, bud." Jack's voice was careful. Cautious. Like he was dismantling a bomb with his words.

"Hey," Mac replied, unable to say anything else.

He splayed his bloody hand against the wall for balance, feeling his body swaying as everything from his shoulder to his belly practically wept. A helpless groan slipped out between his parted lips, his legs shaking, his chest clenching into a knot of pain.

"Want to sit down?" Jack shoved the chair he'd been sitting in closer to Mac with his foot, but didn't approach.

Mac was infinitely grateful that his friend hadn't asked him if he was okay. He would have no idea how to respond to that question.

"Yeah," Mac replied, sinking slowly into the chair, just as his legs gave out from under him.

"I'm just gonna plant myself over here," Jack said, leaning up against Mac's vacated bed, one hand on his bruised chest.

"I'm sorry," Mac managed, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I don't…I'm not sure what…."

"You're good, bud," Jack said, and Mac could see him nodding from the corner of his eyes. "Don't you worry about a thing. You might want to use this, though." He tossed Mac a small washcloth from the stack of towels next to Mac's clothes on the bedside table.

Mac caught it and wrapped it around his bleeding hand, not looking at it, or at Jack, or at much of anything, really.

It was morning; he could see sunlight creating gilded edges around the blinds at the windows. Jack's music was still playing, and had been, he now realized, through the night. He heard the chords of Metallica's _Nothing Else Matters_ pick up from Jack's phone and he almost laughed. The amount of truth in those lyrics bleeding through this moment was all kinds of ironic.

He knew Jack was going to make him talk about what just happened—and part of him knew that he _needed_ to—but the idea of delving into those images and the reasons behind them and the fact that he couldn't get these fucking panic attacks under control….

He just didn't have it in him at the moment. He didn't know if he ever would.

"What are you thinking, Mac?" Jack asked softly; Mac could feel the weight of his eyes.

"I'm thinking…," so many things, too many things, things that didn't make any sense, things that scared him, "I want to go home."

He looked up at Jack then, met his friend's tired eyes and hoped he saw what Mac needed him to see. Jack drew in a quick breath and then nodded.

"Let me go take care of that."

"They're not going to—"

"Eh!" Jack held up a hand. "How about you go get yourself cleaned up a little and I'll go have a chat with good ol' Doctor Evans."

Mac felt his brows fold over his nose. There was no way he was going to be able to get up from this chair on his own let alone change his clothes.

"I…I don't think…." He pressed his free hand against the burns on his belly.

Jack stood, his voice pitching low. "I'll help you," he said without preamble. "Just sit tight; I'll be back."

"Okay."

Jack reached for his phone but Mac pulled his chin up.

"You want me to leave the music?" Jack asked.

Mac simply nodded. If he could concentrate on the music, maybe the memories wouldn't crush him. Jack nodded, then stood—slowly, as if he were afraid sudden movements would startle Mac. And as much as Mac hated that, he needed it. Because right now it felt like he was sitting in a box filled with glass shards and the lid was closing.

It didn't take long for Jack to return with the paperwork necessary to get Mac the meds he needed. With Metallica playing in the background, Jack pulled the privacy curtain, then helped Mac to his feet and grabbed his change of clothes. Helping Mac escape from the sling straps for a moment, Jack untied the hospital gown and hissed slightly when he saw the bruises and wounds littering his young friend's chest.

Mac frowned, disliking being on display. "I showed you mine; you show me yours," he grumbled.

"I'm afraid I'd suffer by comparison," Jack replied.

When Mac glared, Jack shrugged and pulled up the hem of his shirt, showing the dark purple bruise, roughly the size of a fist, just under his sternum. He looked up at Mac before dropping his shirt.

Mac looked miserable. "I'm sorry, Jack."

"You didn't shoot me."

"Still."

Jack felt his irritation evaporate when Mac shivered. "C'mon," he said. "Let's get you dressed before Doc Evans comes to his senses."

Balancing Mac as he pulled on his jeans, Jack helped him ease a shirt over his head and slide his arm back in his sling. By the time he was finished, Mac's muscles were on fire and he was pretty sure he was going to throw up from the pain in his shoulder. Without asking, Jack eased him down into the chair.

"I don't want to stay," Mac gasped, his eyes closed, free hand gripping the arm rest until his knuckled turned white.

"You're not staying," Jack reassured him. "I'm just going to put your shoes on for you. Get you some food, some pain meds, some rest," he said, easing Mac's boots over his sock-covered feet, "you'll be good as new."

A wave of gratitude and affection washed over Mac. "Thanks, Jack."

Jack just winked at him. "I've got you."

* * *

 **MacGyver's Residence  
Two days later**

 _ **Jack**_

"He out back?"

Since the events with Murdoc months ago, Bozer and Mac had both made sure that Jack could access their house whenever he needed to—or, to be more accurate, when Mac needed him to. Therefore he knew he wouldn't surprise Bozer by simply walking in and planting himself at their kitchen island.

Bozer gave him an unamused look, wiping down the counter with one arm, his other still in a sling.

"Yep," Bozer nodded. "He's been out there, or the couch, since you broke him out of Medical. I can't even get him to go back to his room. I don't know what the deal is."

"Give him time, man," Jack lifted a shoulder. "After what he went through, even home doesn't feel like home."

"You ever go through that?"

"What, torture?" Jack tilted his head, knowing he was smacking Bozer in the face with harsh words, but finding it hard to care when his best friend was a walking wound.

"Yeah, okay, torture," Bozer shot back, meeting him hit for hit. "I was talking about waterboarding, but if you want to broaden the scope…."

"Is he having nightmares about that?"

Bozer sighed. "I don't know what he's dreaming about, man. But he sleeps like an hour at a time and he wakes up gasping for air like he's _literally_ drowning and it…," Bozer tossed the rag he'd been using into the sink where it hit with a wet _thunk_. "It's pretty goddamn unsettling, not gonna lie."

Jack looked down. "No," he answered. "I've never been through that." He stood up. "But I've done it to someone before."

"In the CIA?" Bozer pressed.

Jack nodded. "And I knew exactly what I was doing to keep them from drowning. What that assface did to Mac was…," he thought about the stun baton burns he saw on Mac's midsection when he helped the kid dress as they were leaving the hospital, "not the same."

"So, what do I do to help him?" Bozer asked and Jack wanted to hug the kid.

He knew better than anyone how shaky the ground was that Mac had been walking on, and how easily the surface could crack beneath his feet. If Jack was Mac's safety net and protector, Bozer was his grounding and support. There was literally no one else in the world who knew Mac both before and after his father left him. No one else in the world who knew how he'd shaped himself into the person he was today.

But there were some things even a rock like Bozer wasn't going to be able to cover.

"This one? I got," Jack told him. "We're going on a road trip."

"You sure that's the best idea?" Bozer frowned.

Jack nodded, offering Bozer a smile. "I am."

He made his way through the living room—noting that Mac's bike had been returned to its rightful place, though it was still no closer to being repaired—and stepped out onto the back deck. Mac stood at the edge, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, left arm in a sling. He was staring out across the Los Angeles skyline, completely still, save the slight lift of his shoulders as he breathed.

"You and Bozer are quite the pair," Jack said, noting that his friend didn't flinch at the sound of his voice; he'd evidently heard him approach. "You should start a club. The Broken Wing Brothers."

"Hey, Jack," Mac greeted, his voice empty of its usual warmth.

Jack wasn't daunted. He knew this would be hard. And after talking with Freddie about what he wanted to do, he'd gathered a few bits of insight on how to cope with some of the trigger points in Mac's psyche.

"Need you to pack up a few things," Jack plowed forward. "We're going on a little road trip."

That brought him around. Mac turned and leaned on the balcony rail. "Road trip?"

Jack nodded. "Matty found Nicolas' mom. Turns out the kid's dad actually kidnapped him. So _he's_ an all-around swell guy."

"And we're taking Nicolas home?"

As Jack knew it would, the idea brought some life back into Mac's expression.

"That we are—she lives in Astoria, Oregon, home of the Goonies."

Jack counted another win when Mac rolled his eyes and offered Jack a grin genuine enough to flash his dimple for a moment.

"And, on top of that, Freddie's cabin happens to be in Bend, so once we drop the kid off, you and me are doing that nature communing thing we talked about in Berlin."

"With or without room service?" Mac teased, moving away from the balcony edge.

"Depends on how many fish you catch," Jack shrugged. "Can you be ready in a half hour?"

Mac nodded and Jack exhaled slowly as his friend moved past him toward his bedroom. He caught Bozer's surprised expression and smiled.

"I'll call you," he promised. "But in the meantime, I need you to do something for me."

"Dude, you just willingly got him to leave the deck and go somewhere other than the couch," Bozer replied, eyebrows up to his hairline. "I'll do anything you need."

"Call Carlos."

"Mac's friend in Puerto Rico?"

"The same. Let him know that Mac's okay, he's taking some R&R, and he'll call him later."

"Uh…anything about the, uh—"

Jack shook his head. "Nothing he can do about it, no reason to worry him."

"You got it, man."

When Mac returned with a small duffle, he gave Bozer a nod and wave and they were off. Nicolas wasn't a very chatty road trip companion…that is, until they hit a McDonald's drive-thru outside of Los Angeles. At that point, it was the Jack and Nicolas show, singing the best of Garth Brooks—apparently Nicolas' mother was big fan—and inhaling French fries.

Jack caught Mac's grin a few times out of the corner of his eyes and felt himself starting to uncoil. They had one overnight before they reached Astoria—there was only so long a six-year-old could sit still in the car—and Jack was acutely aware that Mac sat up for the majority of the night, near the window of their motel room, reading a book.

Jack knew it was because he was afraid of scaring Nicolas with his nightmares, but he hated that the kid got roughly two hours of sleep that night. Still, he was ready to go the next day, the circles of exhaustion under his eyes blending with the healing bruises on the side of his face.

It was raining as they pulled into Astoria. Jack kept up an easy going commentary with Nicolas as they drove through town, effectively providing a distraction for whatever thoughts created the seam of pain that bisected Mac's forehead.

"That's my school," Nicolas was saying from the back seat, playing local tour guide. "And that's where my Mama gets our food. And that's where we ran into a guy with a cow in the back of his truck and my Mama said a really bad word."

Jack grinned as he heard Mac start to chuckle.

"And there is where I learned how to ride my bike. And that's where I wrecked my bike _two times_ and Mama said another bad word, but this one wasn't _so_ bad."

Mac laughed and Jack's grin widened. He'd missed that sound.

"You're really good at this, buddy," he said, catching Nicolas' eye in the rear view mirror.

The moment they'd arrived in Astoria, the boy had started to liven up. It was almost as though he hadn't believed he was truly going home until he was there. Jack could relate.

"Yeah, my Mama says I'm going to be a writer when I grow up 'cause I've always got so much to say," Nicolas replied matter-of-factly. "But I think I'll be a pirate instead."

Mac covered his mouth to stifle his guffaw and Jack chuckled.

"I think you'll be a fantastic pirate, Nicolas."

"Yeah, me, too." Nicolas straightened up. "Hey! There's my house! That one right there!"

The rain had tapered by the time Jack pulled into the drive way. He shut off the engine just as the screen door of the small bungalow banged open and a dark-haired woman flew down the stairs. Jack stepped out of the car and tipped his seat forward in time for Nicolas to launch himself into his mother's waiting arms.

She knelt in the grass, holding him tightly. She cried and kissed his face and murmured to him and he answered back and Jack found he had to look away for a moment to get his emotions under control. As he turned, however, he caught sight of Mac's expression from where the blonde stood on the other side of the car and for the first time he felt he knew the true meaning of the word _heartbreak_.

Mac was staring at the reunion of Nicolas and his mother with the eyes of a lost boy, the bruises only serving to accentuate the look of yearning. Jack caught his breath, dragging a hand down his face to control his own emotions, then shut the car door and stepped forward.

"Mrs. Devereaux—"

"It's Elias," she sniffed, looking up at him from over her son's head. "Helen Elias. I left the name behind with my ex-husband."

"Ms. Elias," Jack corrected, offering her a smile. "My name is Jack Dalton, and this is my friend, Angus MacGyver."

"He's the one who took me away from Papa," Nicolas said in a low whisper.

At that, Helen's eyes shifted from Jack to take in Mac standing on the other side of the car. She breathed in sharply through the nose, then stood up, her denim-covered knees wet from the grass, and cupped the back of her son's head to pull him close to her hip.

"He did that," she said, her eyes on Mac's face, on his bruises. "Frank."

Jack glanced over at his partner, unsure of how he might handle this.

"Yes," Mac replied simply.

"Because you did not do as he asked," she guessed.

Mac looked down, then back up, meeting her eyes. "Yes."

"Then we have something in common," Helen revealed. Her gaze took in Jack. "Thank you, for bringing my son back to me."

"He's a good kid," Jack grinned. "Going to be a great pirate one day."

Nicolas twisted away from where he held onto his mother and grinned at Jack. Helen laughed and ruffled Nicolas' hair.

"Will you come in for food? A drink?"

"We need to get going," Mac answered for them. "But thank you."

"I can never repay you," she said quietly.

"You just take care of that boy," Jack replied. "That's thanks enough."

Smiling, Helen led Nicolas into their house, leaving the two men to stand silently in her driveway. Jack turned back to the car, regarding Mac over the roof of the car for a moment.

"You okay?"

Mac sniffed, then slid his eyes to Jack. "I'm just glad he's home, safe."

"Me too, brother." He looked over his shoulder at the house. "Me too."

The drive to Bend was quiet without Nicolas' constant chatter. Jack turned on the radio and felt Mac relax into the sound. He punched the dial until he found a classic rock station and let the familiar rhythms of Foreigner, Kansas, and Journey fill the interior of the car.

Mac sighed, his head tipping against the glass, eyes on the passing landscape. Exhaustion rolled off of him in waves—a _to the bone_ tired that spoke not just of a battered body, but a battered heart. A battered mind. So many missions, so much loss, so little light. Jack ached to give his friend some peace, some sense of balance.

Some way to find what Mac had been looking so hard for: validation.

"I do actually remember you falling asleep to Metallica," Mac said suddenly.

"You thought I was crazy," Jack grinned.

"Still do."

"It worked for you, though."

Mac paused a beat. "Yeah, I suppose it did."

Jack cleared his throat. "Y'know…it probably sounds like the biggest chick-flick moment there is—"

Mac rolled his head to the side to regard Jack with a raised brow. "Chick-flick moment?"

"Yeah," Jack shrugged, tipping one hand up where it rested on the steering wheel. "Y'know, like in the movies when it's a perfect time to share something about emotions and the music gets all…crescendo-y."

"Do they _have_ chick-flick moments in _Die Hard_?" Mac teased.

Jack rolled his eyes, replying in a sing-song sass, "No, they don't have chick-flick moments in _Die Hard_." He paused. "They do kinda have them in _Lethal Weapon_ , though," he allowed, glancing at Mac. "And that's more you and me anyway."

Mac chuckled. "Yeah, okay. I'll give you that."

"Anyway, like I was saying," Jack continued. "The lyrics…that song by Hetfield…. It's us, too."

Mac looked down at his hands, lying still in his lap. "Nothing else matters."

Jack smacked the back of his hand gently against Mac's sling. "You get me." He rested his elbow on the window, his right hand at the crest of the steering wheel. "I trust you. And you trust me. And nothing else matters."

Mac smiled softly. "You trust who you _think_ I am," he corrected. "But...," he shrugged, looking back out through the window. "I don't even know who I am sometimes, Jack."

Jack was quiet, his eyes on the road, his whole body primed to listen, trying not to pay too close attention to the oddness of Mac's hands being still. The kid should be fidgeting, playing with strap to his sling, folding a paperclip, creating origami out of napkins stashed in the glove box. _Something_.

"I know there's this person I'm supposed to be," Mac continued. "This guy who just…figures things out. I can see all these…these _connections_ between things. The science and the math…it just makes sense."

Jack waited a beat, sensing Mac wind up to a truth he'd held prisoner for so long, the escape was slow.

"But lately, I can't...I can't make everything make sense," Mac said softly, his voice pitched low, words a tottering, geriatric truth scaling a barricade of caution. "I try to find the path…I try to slow it all down and see the connections but…. It's like pieces are missing." He looked back out through the window. "Or I just don't have the right ones."

Jack glanced over when Mac went silent, but when the kid sighed, he looked back at the road.

"Maybe it's not all supposed to make sense," he offered.

"Maybe," Mac murmured in a tone that told Jack he didn't really agree, but was willing to concede a point as long as he wasn't made to talk about the subject anymore.

They drove on, the music the like a third companion, until Jack had to start following the directions Freddie had given him to his cabin. When they arrived it was almost evening, and once the car was unloaded, Jack built a fire in the cook stove at the center of the living area and Mac wandered back to his room. When he didn't emerge after some time, Jack headed back to check on him, surprised and pleased to find him passed out on his bed, fully clothed, sling gone, face-down in the pillows.

Jack headed back to the living area and began to unpack the food. He'd made two sandwiches, ate his, and was contemplating eating Mac's when he heard a rough shout from the back room. Remembering vividly how Mac had reacted when he's woken him from the nightmare at the hospital, Jack edged cautiously back to the bedroom, peering inside.

Mac sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, breath breaking across his lips in a harsh pants. He was awake, so that's all that mattered. Jack crept back to the kitchen and opened two beers.

When Mac joined him, Jack handed him a beer, noting that the kid hadn't replaced his sling. Mac sat on one of the two deep couches in the living area, his sandwich balanced on one knee. Jack straddled one of the bar stools near the kitchen counter.

"So, uh," Mac started, clearing his throat and swallowing half his beer. "How are we planning to commune with nature?"

" _I'm_ planning to start with fishing," Jack revealed. "But I'm not sure how good _you'll_ be, one wing down."

Mac chuckled. "I'm not sure how good I'd be with two working arms."

"You've never been fishing?" Jack asked, surprised.

Mac shook his head, digging into his sandwich. "It wasn't high on Harry's priority list," he said. "But I understand the general concept."

"Fishing isn't math or science, bud."

Mac narrowed his eyes, the setting sun cutting through the windows on either side of the open cabin door and catching on the strands of his blond hair.

"Everything is math or science," Mac argued.

Jack grinned at him, feeling his body relax, a certainty he didn't realize he'd been lacking on their trek up to the cabin settling into his bones. "Naw, not everything."

"How is fishing, _not_ math or science?" Mac sat back, his left arm held protectively close to his middle, his beer held loosely in his right hand. "It's all about angles and statistics—"

"Let me stop you right there," Jack replied, holding up his beer and smiling, "before my Pop starts rolling over in his grave."

"Your dad was a fisherman, huh?"

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe," Jack declared, affection creating a warm glow in the center of his chest. "Among those were how the lakes and rivers were designed to provide home to the fish who, in turn, were designed to provide life to animals, like us."

Mac rolled his lips against his teeth. "Your dad sounds like he was a bit of a poet."

"Yeah, well, one of his favorite sayings—aside from _rub some dirt on it_ , and _take care of your weapon and it'll take care of you_ —was that life is destined to become stories, as if it was something that was made and not something that happened."

Mac's eyes turned wistful. "I can remember my dad saying is that we are all a product of the choices we make."

Jack nodded. "Well, on that point, our fathers might agree," he said. "Although, my Pop would spin it a bit and say that we're all made up of the stories we tell."

"I think I like that better," Mac said, his brows quirking across the bridge of his nose. "Especially since I'm not sure I like what my choices say about me."

Jack studied his young partner. "Why'd you fire that gun, Mac?"

Mac jerked in surprise. Jack didn't blame him. He hadn't realized he was going to ask the question until it was out of his mouth. But, since he was already out on that ledge….

"I've never seen you fire a weapon, in all the years I've known you," Jack revealed. "You've always found another way."

Mac took another drink of his beer.

"I never really understood it—especially when we were in Afghanistan—but I always respected it." Jack tilted his head. "And I _think_ I get it, but…I'd still like to know."

"I don't know," Mac hedged.

"See, I think you do know, but…," Jack shook his head. "You don't want to look at anything too closely right now."

Mac frowned, looking up at Jack. "What?"

"You forget I know you, bud. Better, I think, than you know yourself."

Mac stood up and moved around Jack to the kitchen, throwing away his beer bottle and putting his plate in the sink. He stood in the open doorway of the cabin, his body turning into a dark silhouette as he faced the sunset. Jack decided to press forward.

"The world only makes sense to you when you can put the puzzle pieces together, decipher the code," Jack continued. "And in almost every situation, you get to the solution before the rest of us realize there is a question. But when a piece is missing, or there's a flaw in the code, and you just get lost."

Mac didn't reply, but Jack could see his shoulders drawing together with tension.

"Take Frank, for example. Now, sure, he had to be an extra special asshole and scramble your neurons a bit, but even without the stun baton, he didn't fit into your big picture because he betrayed you." Mac flinched, and Jack tightened his grip on his beer bottle. "You saved him and instead of embracing that second chance and doing something meaningful with his life, he tried to kill you."

Mac turned around and headed past Jack to his room. "I'm turning in early."

"You need to talk about this, Mac—"

"Why?" Mac whirled around to face Jack, pain rippling across his face as he swung his left arm without thinking. Grabbing it in his right he glared at his partner. "What good does it do to _talk_ about it? Huh? I can't change _any_ of it!"

"You can heal."

Mac rolled his eyes. "Oh, bullshit. You're telling me you're all healed up from Farah? Kabul? _Cairo_?" He took a step forward for each city. "That was a bad as they come—we both agreed on that—and yet we _never talk about it_."

Jack clicked his teeth closed. The kid had him there.

"Talking about what Frank did to me solves _nothing_. Saving Andrew was the _only_ thing that mattered."

Jack drew his head back. "Nicolas."

The name brought Mac up short. "What?"

"You said saving Andrew. The kid's name is Nicolas," Jack said, a pins and needles feeling trickling through him. "Andrew was the Ambassador's son, Mac."

"I know who he is," Mac snarled, wincing as he cradled his arm. "I'm going to get some air."

Jack didn't stop him.

The sun set, the frogs and cicadas came out and just as Jack was about to grab a flashlight and go search for him, Mac came back in. His hair was disheveled and his face flushed under the healing bruises, but what caught Jack's eye and worry was the growing patch of blood on Mac's left shoulder.

"What happened?" Jack demanded, trying with every part of him not to surge up and grab hold of the kid.

"Nothing," Mac muttered quietly, closing the door behind him.

"Uh, you're bleeding again, bud. Pretty sure _bleeding again_ is not nothing."

Mac sighed, moving further into the cabin and paused next to Jack, looking almost apologetic. Instead of firing back another stubborn retort, he simply said, "Do you mind helping me?"

Jack followed him to the shared bathroom and as Mac carefully peeled his long-sleeved T-shirt over his head, Jack fought to keep his face expressionless at the sight of the latest wounds joining his young partner's collection of scars. He knew from experience that their scars told their stories, but Mac story had too many chapters for the amount of time he'd been alive.

Jack winced when he looked at the bloody bandage that covered both sides of Mac's shoulder where the bullet had sliced through muscle.

"Yep," Jack muttered, peeling away the gauze. "Looks like you pulled a few stitches."

"Do you need to put them back in?" Mac asked, his voice tight as he swayed a bit.

Jack put a hand on his elbow to steady him. "I think I can patch you up and avoid more needles—if you promise to stop waving your arms around like a crazy person."

"Deal," Mac sighed, tensing as Jack cleaned the blood from his skin and used the antibacterial cream that Dr. Evans had prescribed before he bandaged the wound. He went ahead and cleaned the stun baton wound on the back of Mac's neck as well.

"Want me to take care of these?" Jack asked, looking at the seeping wounds on Mac's abdomen.

"I got it," Mac replied.

Jack stepped back from the sink, leaning against the wall and waited as Mac treated the wounds on his belly.

"You taking those antibiotics and stuff Doc Evans gave you?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Mac reassured him. "Man, those batons are wicked," he muttered. "My muscles are _still_ sore."

"Well, he _did_ almost kill you with that last one," Jack pointed out.

Mac met Jack's eyes in the mirror. "What do you mean?"

Jack averted his eyes. "I was across the street, on overwatch. Matty wouldn't let me go in, at first. She was worried," he pointed to the still-healing wound on his temple. "I saw through the scope. Saw him jab that thing against your skin and saw you…." He choked off, stepping out of the bathroom, his eyes burning. He paused in the hallway. "Just…I saw enough to know you've been through hell, Mac. Just know that."

He didn't wait for Mac to respond, simply retreated to his room and watched until he saw the light from the hallway turn off. He knew his emotions sometimes overwhelmed not only him, but his partner as well. A lot of guys who'd been through what Jack had been through, who'd done the things he'd done, were hard, their outer shells made of titanium.

But something inside Jack had gone another direction. He knew how fragile life was, how close to death everyone he loved was at any moment, and it accentuated his emotions. Enhanced them to the point he knew he wasn't always taken seriously by those who didn't know him.

Everyone had their defense mechanisms. For Jack, it was letting himself display everything he felt. And he was afraid that for Mac, there was a danger of displaying nothing he felt.

And he couldn't let that happen.

That night he heard Mac shout out twice, both of them wordless, panicked cries. He didn't go to his partner either time, knowing that with the barbed wire Mac had wrapped around himself, he could easily do more damage at the moment than good.

The next morning when Jack got up in search of coffee, Mac's bedroom door was open, but the kid was nowhere to be found. Without warning, Carlos' worried voice echoed through his memory. _They're breaking. Inside. Where no one sees. Until it's too late. And we lose them._

He was _not_ losing Mac. Even if he…couldn't exactly find him at the moment.

Frowning, and trying to ignore his growing sense of panic, Jack checked that the car was still there first, then started to circle the cabin, stopping short when he saw a figure sitting at the end of the boat pier, wrapped in a blanket. Sighing with relief, he brewed two cups of coffee and headed down to join his friend.

"You're shivering," Jack observed, handing Mac a mug of coffee. "You been out here long?"

"I was going to go for a swim," Mac confessed taking the coffee with a grateful smile. "I couldn't sleep and thought maybe…y'know, physical therapy and all."

"Sure, I'll buy it," Jack replied.

He sipped his coffee, watching as Mac simply held the warm mug in his hands, his lanky body curled up cross legged under the blanket draped over his shoulders. There was something young and vulnerable about the way he was sitting.

He wasn't a government agent in that moment, someone who had saved countless lives—including Jack's. He was just a twenty-five year old kid who'd been beat up and bruised and felt lost and alone.

"But…I couldn't…," Mac looked down.

"What?"

"I couldn't put my face in the water," Mac confessed, looking away.

Jack sighed, closing his eyes. "Aw, kid."

"Stupid, I know."

"It's not, and the sooner you realize that, the quicker you'll be able to heal from this," Jack stressed.

Mac sighed, holding the mug closer to his chest, inside the shelter of the blanket. "I keep trying to…y'know. File it all away. Inside my head. The…the pain and the…the panic and the way it felt when I knew I was drowning. Sitting in that…that goddamn chair and _drowning_."

Jack felt tears draw warm lines on his morning-cool cheeks.

"But it won't fit. It's like it's too big," Mac continued, his eyes on the water, and a million miles away. "And I've never had something be too big before. I even fit my dad leaving in one of those files. But this…I mean, why…why _this_? It's not like I haven't been hurt before."

Jack closed his eyes, remembering. Too often. Too many times.

"Maybe it's not that it's too big," he offered, trying to steady his voice and hide his tears. "Maybe it's that your files are just too full."

"Maybe," Mac sighed. He sipped his coffee, then set the mug down on the wooden pier, curling his empty hands into loose fists in his lap. "There's this…part of me that keeps thinking…if I knew who I was—like, _why_ I am who I am—then maybe those drawers would work better."

"You don't need to put everything in files, Mac," Jack said. "Not everything has to be hidden away."

"This does, though," Mac argued. "Because…I. There were choices I made. Firing the gun. Going after Frank. I wasn't…those choices weren't _me_." Mac bowed his head forward, sighing. "I don't know who they were."

Jack reached out and rubbed the back of Mac's head. "There are a lot of sides to us, Mac. No one is one thing all the time."

Mac nodded, but Jack could tell that it was just once more agreeing to stop the conversation.

"How about we see what kind of a fisherman you are, huh?"

He made Mac put the sling back on, especially when he saw the bruising creeping up the kid's neck from the shoulder wound. They sat on the edge of the pier, feet in the water, and Jack showed him how to cast and how to reel the line back in. It was awkward and unsuccessful with the sling, and words between them were scarce, but the sunlight and the peace of the lake blanketed them both with a sense of calm.

As they were packing in the supplies at the end of the day, however, Mac suddenly spoke up.

"I think it was because of you," he said.

Jack shot a look over his shoulder where the blonde was trailing him back inside the cabin. "You mean our dinner tonight? You're right…if we had to depend on you, we'd starve."

"The gun," Mac clarified. "You asked me about the gun last night and…. It was because I thought…I thought I'd just seen you die."

Jack felt his heart stutter in his chest, remembering, feeling the bruises still present, knowing exactly how Mac felt because it had been the same for him when that building came down. Still, there was something in Mac's eyes….

"But, I was right there," he protested. "You knew I wasn't dead."

Mac's eyebrows went up, his eyes blinking a dead-eyed stare. "Yeah, you were right there with a gun at your throat."

Jack tilted his head, seeing something shift in Mac's blue eyes. Something skittering away as if afraid of the light. "You sure that's all you've got?"

"It was like…residual electric charge," Mac said, as though his thoughts were scrambling for purchase. There was such a foreign tone to his voice that Jack shifted his weight to his heels, needing more balance to take on the fact that Mac was lying to him because it hurt him too much to face the truth. "A current needs to be grounded because there's always residual charge that has to have somewhere to go—like…hyperactive energy. Without the ground it…spreads and could hit anything."

"Uh-huh. So you're saying that seeing me get shot…."

"Was like an electric charge," Mac said, relief spreading across his face at the thought that Jack was following this excuse. "I just…I couldn't pull it back in. Frank had a gun to your head and I'd just gotten you back from that hit in Berlin and I couldn't…."

"It's okay, man," Jack squared off to face him. "But, honestly, if you'd have made me guess? I would have said it was because the bastard was willing to throw his own son away."

Mac blinked in surprise, the blood draining from his face so rapidly Jack spared a fleeting thought to the kid literally keeling over right in front of him.

"'Cause, I mean, I get it. Seeing him put a gun to my head pissed you off," Jack lifted a shoulder, "but seeing him use that little boy as a shield…."

"Jack—"

"But, if you say it was me, and that it had _nothing_ to do with the fact that you haven't gotten over the Ambassador's son dying—no matter how many times you tell me you have—"

"Stop," Mac shook his head.

Jack shifted his weight. The gutted look on Mac's face punched something deep inside him. But instinct told him not to let this go.

"Okay, I'll stop," he conceded. "But just so you know, I'm calling bullshit."

"You are," Mac lifted his chin, his eyes heating.

"Damn right I am," Jack tilted his head in a silent challenge. "You've seen a gun to my head I don't know how many times. You've seen me shot, stabbed, bleeding out. You cauterized my goddamn leg with gunpowder, hoss. You know damn well I'm not leaving you that easy." Jack dropped his chin and pinned Mac with a look. "So, if you want to think you shot that pile of tannerite because of some…some residual electrical charge, or whatever the hell…, you go ahead. But you know and I know that that it's total crap."

Mac stared at him for several heartbeats and then his face folded into an exasperated smile. "You're a terrible counselor."

And just like that, the tension was gone.

"I thought I was doing pretty good," Jack shrugged, relieved that his approach had snapped Mac out of his line of thinking.

Mac moved forward until he was level with Jack. "Don't quit your day job. All I'm saying."

"At least now I know you _can_ shoot a gun," Jack teased.

Mac gave him a look. "Of course I can shoot a gun."

"I mean…it totally could have been a cover all this time," Jack continued, poking a Mac gently with his good-natured taunts. " _I don't like guns, Jack, because I don't know how to use them_."

"You're a jerk," Mac chuckled.

Laughing, Jack led them into the house and dumped the fish into the sink. Mac helped clean the fish and after dinner they made fun of Freddie's movie collection, finally settling on _Hudson Hawke_ , since it was the only Bruce Willis movie in the collection.

The night ended so well that Jack felt sure Mac would get actual rest. When the shout echoed through the cabin several hours after they'd settled in, Jack woke up in a cold sweat.

Because this time, the shout had been his name.

He was out of his room and into Mac's before he was truly awake. Mac was twisted in his blankets, his hands fisted into the edges. He'd wasn't wearing a shirt, the bandages standing out in the darkness of his room. Jack switched on the lamp next to the bed.

" _Jack_!" Mac shouted again, the name ripped from his gut and shredding his voice along its escape.

"Mac, hey, _hey_!" Jack dropped down to the side of the bed, gripping his partner's shoulder. "Mac, it's okay. Wake up, I'm right here."

Mac opened his eyes, the pupils blown so wide he wasn't close to conscious. "He's trapped…he's under there, we gotta…we gotta get him…." The words were rapid and mumbled, spilling from his lips in panic.

"Hey, kid," Jack cupped either side of Mac's face with his hands, his thumbs against Mac's cheekbones. Careful of the bruises, he pressed gently. "Mac, I'm okay. I'm right here."

Mac blinked once, shaking hands coming up to wrap long fingers around his wrists.

"That's it, wake up, bud. It's okay. We're okay."

Jack watched as Mac's eyes started to clear, awareness returning in stages. He slowly released his hands as Mac pulled in a few deep breaths, pushing up in his bed, away from Jack. Swallowing roughly, Mac looked around the room, as though trying to remember where he was.

"You with me?"

Mac rubbed at his face. "Yeah."

"That was a rough one," Jack sighed, sinking onto the edge of the bed.

Mac closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yeah," he sighed. He looked so worn out it broke Jack's heart. "Be right back."

He untangled himself from the blankets and Jack waited as he dove into the bathroom, returning several minutes later, his face damp. He sank onto the bed, curling his legs up beneath him as though trying to make himself as small as possible.

"I wish I could take these away from you, pal."

"Not like you don't have 'em, too," Mac muttered.

They were never this bad, though, Jack knew. Mainly because he didn't live with the same kind of pain as Mac carried with him.

"Not like these," he said softly.

Mac flopped backwards against the bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. "Still."

"Mac," Jack sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, his hands tented. "You're right. I do have nightmares. But they aren't about what I've done. Every person I've killed, had to be killed. In that moment, because of a justifiable reason. I _believe_ that. I have to. Because if I don't, the world doesn't make sense." He glanced over at his partner. "I have nightmares about what I didn't do, what I couldn't do, what I should have done. And since there's no filing cabinet in my head, I end up finding other ways to get rid of all that so it doesn't eat me alive every night."

Mac dropped his arm across his eyes. "'m just so tired," he said, sounding close to tears. "I can't…I can't _think_ anymore. It's like every thought is in a race with itself and I just…I need to find that place where breath becomes air. And I'm not fighting for it _all the time_."

Jack was silenced by the raw honesty spilling from his friend.

"I can't think without you around," Mac confessed.

"What's that?" Jack blinked in surprise.

"It's just…easier. You're like this…steady beat. And you make me focus."

 _It's not codependency. It's…loyalty. Need. Obligation. It's family, Matty._

Jack chuckled.

Mac peeked at him from under his arm. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing except…I told Matty her whole codependency theory was bullshit." Jack grinned affectionately at Mac. "And the truth is…things don't work so great for me when you're not around."

"They don't work so great for you when I _am_ around, too," Mac gestured toward the healing wound on Jack's head, pushing himself upright on the bed once more.

"I'm not talking about that," Jack waved his hand off. "I'm talking about you…jumping out of the car all set and ready to make yourself a hostage in a freaking _bank robbery_ on your vacation and leaving me behind," Jack said, standing and walking toward the window, needing to move in order to keep talking. "Or you getting my ass to safety while you stay behind to blow up a cartel stronghold. I mean…," he sighed rubbing his hand over his close-cropped hair, turning back around to face his partner. "You're my _boy_ , Mac. You're family. What happens to you happens to me, and all that."

Mac was staring at him with big eyes, his chin quivering as emotion dug in. "I never thought of it as leaving you behind."

"I know you didn't," Jack sighed. "I know. You're just trying to crack the code. Solve the problem. But…man, you gotta stop thinking you're an expendable component." He rested his hands on his hips, having run out of places to put them. "You are the solution, Mac."

Mac looked down to his lap, his hands once more worryingly still. Jack hated to admit it, but he missed the constant flow of motion that _was_ Mac. This stillness was suffocating.

"I don't feel like the solution," Mac said quietly.

"And that right there is the problem, bud." Jack shook his head. He frowned as he watched Mac rub distractedly at the back of his neck, then pull up short when his fingers hit the stun baton wound. "Look, we aren't going to fix this in one night. It's late and you are seriously sleep deprived. You want some of the pain meds they sent home with you?"

"Sure," Mac muttered, slumping down against the pillows as Jack went to the kitchen for the meds.

When he returned, however, Mac was already asleep. Sighing, Jack turned off the light and went to his room, sitting on the edge of his own bed. His mind was buzzing, his head aching. He looked at the pain pills in his hand.

"What the hell," he muttered, swallowing both and taking a gulp of water.

His sleep was deep and dreamless. He slept so hard, in fact, he almost didn't hear the rain slap against the roof and windows with a staccato drumbeat. Blearily, he peered at the gray light of pre-dawn sneaking cautious fingers around the curtains. He checked his watch.

0600.

The sun wasn't even up yet.

Showering and dressing quickly, he went out to the kitchen, half expecting Mac to be hunkered over a cup of coffee in reaction to the wet, grey weather. When he found the living area empty as well, he headed out into the rain toward the pier. Finding nothing there, he started to wander along the shoreline, rain plastering his clothes to his body in minutes.

He slowed to a stop several feet away from the figure of his friend, standing at the edge of the water, rain turning his blond hair dark, his Henley soaked and stuck to his slim frame like paper mache.

Jeans rolled up to mid-calf as though he had been outside before the rain began, Mac held a handful of rocks in his left hand, sans sling, and with his right, he was skimming them along the surface of the lake. Were it not for the rain, it might have been the picture of a lazy summer morning.

Except for the expression on Mac's face.

Jack couldn't decide if it was anguish or anger. It wasn't _Mac_ …not the Mac he'd known for so long, not the Mac who'd burn the world down to save him. Not the Mac who'd burn himself out to save the world.

This was a kid who'd been abandoned, forgotten. Who'd turned himself inside out to save innocents and been betrayed because of it. This was a kid lost and alone and searching for someone to tell him that he was enough.

Jack approached quietly, watching as Mac stopped skimming the rocks and started throwing them, each one going further, landing with a _plunk_ far out into the lake. When he ran out of rocks in his stash, he bent down and grabbed more, throwing harder. Jack could see Mac's bloodshot eyes, his lips pressed tight across his teeth, and knew the kid's tears were blending with the rainwater on his face.

The throws took the air from his lungs in a rough _unf_ of sound, the rocks quickly disappearing from around his feet. Jack gathered several from where he stood and drew even closer. Mac was panting for breath, his wet hair slicked back from his face by anxious fingers. He splashed lake water up into the rainstorm as he lunged forward to get the rocks as far as he could.

When his hands were empty and trembling, Jack offered him the half dozen he'd picked up and Mac kept throwing. His face was red from exertion, the tears those of frustration and resentment and loss. He threw until his hands were empty and then he stood panting, his shoulders heaving, his arm visibly trembling. He turned to face Jack, blue eyes neon in the grey morning light.

Jack gave him a small, sad smile. "Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks."

Mac huffed out a helpless sob, his lips quivering helplessly.

"Look, Mac," Jack said carefully. "You don't need to fit everything into those files in your head because those files, bud? They're all _you_. The good and the bad and the stuff you don't know what to do with and the stuff you know exactly how to use. It's _all_ you."

Mac's breath hitched as he stared at Jack. He blinked and a tear spilled down his cheek, blending with the drops of rain on his skin. Jack reached under the wet neck of his T-shirt and pulled forward a chain, watching as Mac's eyes tracked his movement, lighting on the two piece of metal now resting in Jack's hands.

Mac's dog tags.

" _I_ know who you are, kid," Jack said just loud enough to be heard over the rainwater hitting the churning lake. "I've known since the day I tried to wipe the floor with you after you dared to touch my rifle. You were nineteen years old, a hundred pounds soaking wet, and a goddamn know-it-all, but you were a _good_ kid."

Mac let out a rough sob, his eyes pinned to the dog tags.

"To your _bones_ good. You had a light around you and it shone through everything you did, and I knew even then, even though I cussed and complained…I _knew_ you were family to me." Jack pulled the dog tags from around his neck and held them out to Mac who took them with a shaking hand. "That light is still there, Mac. It's still there all around you, even though we wade through so much darkness, all the time, every day. We push it back with every life we save. _You_ push it back with every problem you solve."

Mac ran his thumb over the lettering of the dog tags.

"Honestly, it doesn't matter if every person we save screws us over," Jack continued, taking a step closer, closing the distance between them. "It doesn't matter if you ever find your dad. It doesn't matter if you never shoot a gun again or you shoot one every day. It doesn't matter if the entire team thinks we're hopelessly codependent. Because I _know you_ , kid. I know you'll keep that light around you." Jack put a careful hand on Mac's shoulder. "No matter how dark it gets. Because _that's_ who you are."

Mac swayed, leaning almost helplessly into Jack's grip and Jack took that as his permission to pull the kid into a hug, wrapping an arm around Mac's shoulders and cupping the back of his head when he felt Mac's arms reach up, his fingers curling in to grip Jack's wet shirt.

Jack held himself still, waiting, listening for Mac to drag in a rough breath. He wanted to throw a few rocks of his own—only not harmlessly into the lake—when he felt the kid tremble with that breath.

"I gotcha, brother," Jack said softly. "You're gonna be okay."

They stood still until Mac pulled away, wiping his face with the back of his hand and pulling in a slow, steadying breath. He glanced at Jack and nodded, a hesitant smile in his eyes. Jack smiled back, water splashing up as he gently clapped him on the shoulder, and turned him back toward the house.

"Did you really just quote _Forrest Gump_?" Mac asked, his voice low and rough from tears.

Jack shrugged, laughing. "I'm not a smart man," he teased, "but I know a good quote when I hear it."

Mac chuckled, leading the way into the cabin. They left wet tracks to their bedrooms, taking turns with the shower and downed several cups of coffee as the chilly day settled into their bones. Jack lit the fire in the stove and they gave each other space for the day.

Toward evening, Jack found Mac in the living area surrounded by a pile of Freddie's books—mostly about NASA—marveling at this unknown side of their mutual friend. They spent several hours poring over the books until Mac was falling asleep sitting up and Jack was forced to haul him to his feet to send him down the hall to bed.

That night, Jack lay awake, listening. Waiting. When the cabin stayed quiet well past midnight, he allowed himself to relax, waking to the late morning sunlight. It took him a moment to register that he'd not been woken up by a shout that night.

Breathing deeply, he allowed himself to hope.

As he wandered out to the living area, he saw that he was once again alone. Frowning, he headed to the coffee pot, only registering the note taped to the machine when he lifted the pot from its stand. He tugged the note off of the machine and squinted at Mac's neatly squared handwriting.

 _We need food. You have keys._

Jack grinned. Sassy kid. He brewed his coffee, then filled a cup and moved to the porch, scanning the lake's shoreline for Mac.

It didn't take him long to spot Mac sitting at the edge of the pier. His sling gone, a fishing pole was in his hand, and his feet were hanging in the water. A beam of sun hit him like a spotlight. As Jack watched, Mac lifted his face to the light, closing his eyes like he was soaking up the warmth.

For the first time in months, since the moment they lost Ambassador and his family, Jack felt like his partner might actually find some balance in the world.

He dug into his jacket pocket and grabbed his car keys and wallet. A paperclip was stuck in the folds of his wallet, having been dropped in that particular pocket at some point. Smiling, he turned Mac's note over and wrote one of his own, then fastened it to the coffee maker using the paperclip.

 _Call Carlos._

He glanced once more at his partner soaking up the sun at the edge of the pier and smiled.

"I got you, kid."

 **THE END**

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you all so much for reading. I _truly_ appreciate the gift of your time (even if it sometimes takes me a bit to reply to your reviews).

This will be the end of this particular series of stories for MacGyver, but I have an idea for one that I'm going to try to get written before S3 starts (on September 28th) that deals a bit with the ramifications of the S2 finale. If you like what you've read here, I hope to see you back for that one. Slainte!


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